Since Korea is a peninsula, you can find every type of seafood (해물 haemul), eaten both cooked and raw. Restaurants where you pick your own fish ? or bring it from the fish market next door ? are popular, but can be very expensive depending on what you order.
Hoe (회), pronounced roughly "hweh", is raw fish Korean-style (similar to sashimi), meaning it's served with spicy cho-gochujang (Korean hot pepper sauce with vinegar) sauce. Chobap (초밥) is raw fish with vinegared rice, similar to Japanese sushi. If ordering fish as hoe/chobap, the bony parts not served raw are often made into a tasty but spicy soup called meuntang (매운탕).
Another cooked specialty is haemultang (해물탕), a spicy red hotpot stew filled crab, shrimp, fish, squid, vegetables and noodles.
Whalemeat is also available quite commonly at festivals the entire country over. Bear in mind that there has been quite a media ruckus over its origin: a recent study of restaurants in Seoul traced the meat back to Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean. As international whale trade is illegal, and the species itself endangered, this is one decision to be left up your own moral compass.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about South Korea
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in South Korea - updated Apr 2024
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South Korea Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
