In 1934 Koreans Boiled It: The 90-Year Story of How Samgyeopsal Became Korea's National Food

Fat spits and crackles. The grill glows hot, and six strips of raw pork sizzle the moment they hit the metal. Tongs flip, scissors snip. A lettuce leaf is spread, a garlic clove dredged in ssamjang set on top. It’s a scene you can catch on any evening, in any Seoul neighborhood.

But hold that scene up against a newspaper page from ninety years ago and it falls apart. The Dong-A Ilbo of November 3, 1934, carried a single sentence about this cut — and there’s no grilling in it. The name isn’t even samgyeopsal.

This isn’t a story about price, and it isn’t the serving-size debate. It follows how one cut’s name changed, how a boiled meat ended up on the grill, and why the most famous explanation for that journey doesn’t square with the numbers.

What Was Samgyeopsal Originally Called?

Segyeopsal. The oldest confirmed newspaper record — a Dong-A Ilbo article from November 3, 1934 — called this cut segyeopsal. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, published by the Academy of Korean Studies, quotes the original text.

That single sentence says three things at once.

First, Koreans in the 1930s already knew exactly which part of the pig tasted best — the cut between the hind leg and the belly, then the neck. That lines up almost eerily, ninety years on, with a 2024 survey in which Koreans’ top two favorite cuts were samgyeopsal and moksim (neck).

Second, the spelling is segyeopsal, not samgyeopsal. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture notes that segyeopsal remained the official term until the early 1980s, and that the hanja-tinted name samgyeopsal only became standard afterward.

Third, the hanja 三枚 is glossed in parentheses — direct documentary evidence for the theory that the word was influenced by the Japanese sanmai niku (“three-layer meat”). Whether that spelling is genuinely a Japanese loanword or simply the era’s habit of annotating Korean words with hanja still needs separate verification. There’s also the Kaesong-origin theory — that merchants in Kaesong coined the word — but no primary source has been confirmed.

The name’s settling took even longer. Some accounts say segyeopsal (baetbaji, “belly meat”) appears in the 1931 revised edition of Joseon Yori Jebeop, but the original has not been checked against. The expression samgyeopsal is said to have first appeared in the press in 1959, though sources disagree on whether the outlet was the Kyunghyang Shinmun or the Chosun Ilbo. The claim that samgyeopsal became an administrative term with a 1990 law on differential pricing by cut also needs verification against the statute itself. Likewise, the National Institute of Korean Language’s Standard Korean Language Dictionary was first published in 1999, so the commonly cited year of 1994 for its entry is likely imprecise.

One light piece of trivia: the name says three layers, but the meat doesn’t cooperate. Lean and fat usually alternate four times. From the very beginning, samgyeopsal was one layer out of sync with reality.

Why Was Samgyeopsal Still a Boiled Meat in 1957?

Because you couldn’t eat it grilled. The reason is simple: the smell.

The 1957 court-cuisine book Ijo Gungjeong Yori Tonggo, compiled by Han Hui-sun and others, puts it plainly: jeyuk pyeonyuk is pork segyeopsal that is boiled and thinly sliced. In a book that traces the lineage of Joseon royal cuisine, samgyeopsal goes into the pot, not onto the grill.

The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture likewise notes that samgyeopsal was historically eaten most often as jjim (braised), pyeonyuk, or jorim (soy-braised). According to Farm Insight’s account, up until the 1970s both beef and pork were most commonly prepared as suyuk (boiled meat), guk, or tang (soups and stews).

The problem was boar taint — the pungent, gamey odor peculiar to uncastrated male pigs. In an era of crude pig-farming techniques, pork carried that smell, and grilling it with nothing but salt only drew it out. So people boiled the smell away or buried it under seasoning. Suyuk, pyeonyuk, jjim, jorim, seasoned grilling — until the 1970s, the entire list of pork recipes was really a list of ways to handle the smell.

In other words, not grilling samgyeopsal wasn’t a matter of taste. It was a technical limit.

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Is the "Japan Only Bought the Lean Cuts" Story True?

It’s a widely repeated explanation, but it doesn’t fit the export statistics or the timeline. This is the most important part of the article.

🥓 Pork exports to Japan, 1962–1984 — the numbers that test the common theory (Farm Insight)

Period	Export volume	What it means
1962	39 tonnes of pork, 40,535 live pigs	Early days of exports. The volume itself was trivial
1963	398.1 tonnes of pork	Still small-scale
1972	3,802 tonnes / US$5.789 million	Pork exports to Japan take off in earnest
1974–1977	Roughly 22,000 tonnes total over four years	Unprecedented growth. The peak
1978	Effectively halted	Rising domestic prices and the meat crisis
Early 1980s	Effectively none	No leftover volume existed right when the samgyeopsal boom erupted
Second half of 1983	—	Overproduction price shock
1984	296 tonnes	Exports to Japan resume, at about 1% of the peak
After 1995	—	Export-led LPCs begin full-scale cut processing

Dr. Kim Tae-gyeong flips the direction of causality itself. His counter-question is the heart of the debate: if loin and tenderloin had never been exported to Japan but had instead circulated domestically, would Koreans have come to love loin and tenderloin the way the Japanese did?

In other words, exports didn’t make Koreans eat samgyeopsal; Koreans simply used exports to dispose of a cut they ate less of. The fact that a 1930s newspaper already ranked the meat between the belly and hind leg as the best supports this direction. The preference predates the exports.

To be fair, Dr. Kim does allow that the common theory isn’t entirely baseless — he suspects that from the late 1970s only loin and tenderloin were exported. His precise phrasing: exports to Japan were less the decisive cause of Koreans’ samgyeopsal preference than a result that exploited it.

So What Actually Put Samgyeopsal on the Grill?

The best-supported explanation is breed improvement. Eliminating boar taint was the turning point.

Two things happened at once. One was three-way crossbreeding — mating three breeds to improve meat quality. The other was castration at the production stage. As both spread, boar taint disappeared, and only then did plain salt-grilled roseu-gui become possible. Farm Insight and English Wikipedia describe this in the same spirit.

Corporate pig farming pushed the change along. In 1973, Samsung Group’s Cheil Jedang started a pig-farming operation in Yongin, Gyeonggi-do, and by 1976 it had expanded into a large corporate-scale farm. Around this time, assessments emerged that meat quality had visibly improved thanks to breed improvement and compound feed. Cheil Jedang later withdrew from pig farming, though, amid farmers’ protests over a land-speculation controversy.

There’s a policy backdrop too. Up through the 1980s, beef was Korea’s favorite meat. But cattle were used as draft power on farms, so the government encouraged pork and chicken instead. In a country that pushed pork to spare its cattle, the tastiest cut of pork ended up becoming the national dish — in effect.

How Did the Fire Change?

As the fuel changed, BBQ joints spread. If breed improvement made grilling possible, gas made it easy.

In the 1970s, as propane gas supply began, grill houses multiplied. Records from this period mention many grilling spots springing up in Mapo — like Mapo Galbi — indirect evidence that Mapo was the early center of Korean meat grilling. In the late 1970s, specialist samgyeopsal-gui restaurants appeared, and by the early 1980s they were concentrated in Samgak-dong, Seoul.

The decisive object arrived in 1980: the portable butane gas stove, sold in earnest. From then on, the name samgyeopsal appeared on restaurant menus. By the mid-1980s, portable stoves were ubiquitous, and samgyeopsal grilling became synonymous with outdoor company dinners. There are accounts that so many people hauled grills into the mountains and valleys that the Korea Forest Service cracked down — but only secondary sources confirm this, and the contemporary articles need checking.

🥓 A timeline of samgyeopsal's spread — confirmed records only (1934–2024)

Year	Event	Source
1934.11.3	Dong-A Ilbo: the segyeopsal (called sam-mae) between the hind leg and belly is the most delicious	Encyclopedia of Korean Culture
1957	Ijo Gungjeong Yori Tonggo: jeyuk pyeonyuk is boiled, sliced segyeopsal — samgyeopsal was still a boiled meat in this era	Encyclopedia of Korean Culture
1959	First appearance of the word samgyeopsal in the press	Outlet records conflict; needs verification
1972	Pork exports to Japan take off in earnest: 3,802 tonnes	Farm Insight
1973	Cheil Jedang begins pig farming in Yongin, Gyeonggi-do	Morning Calm
1974~77	Exports to Japan total roughly 22,000 tonnes over four years, then halt	Farm Insight
1976	Cheil Jedang expands to a corporate-scale farm; breed improvement and compound feed lift meat quality	Morning Calm
1970s	Propane gas supply spreads grill houses	Korean Wikipedia
Late 1970s	Specialist samgyeopsal-gui restaurants appear	Encyclopedia of Korean Culture
1980	Portable butane stoves sold in earnest; samgyeopsal appears as a restaurant menu item	Korean Wikipedia
Early 1980s	Specialist samgyeopsal-gui restaurants concentrate in Samgak-dong, Seoul	Encyclopedia of Korean Culture
Early 1980s	Pork exports to Japan effectively nil — the timeline contradiction in the export-leftovers theory	Farm Insight
1980s	Meat-processing plants like Lotte Ham and Baekseol Ham come online — the processing-leftovers theory	Farm Insight
Mid-1980s	Portable gas stoves become ubiquitous	Encyclopedia of Korean Culture
Late 1990s	Sotttukkeong (cauldron-lid) samgyeopsal trend	Encyclopedia of Korean Culture
1997~98	IMF financial crisis; the coinage “IMF samgyeopsal” appears	Encyclopedia of Korean Culture
Around 2000	Ogyeopsal — a marketing coinage by merchants for skin-on samgyeopsal	Korean Wikipedia
2010~11	Foot-and-mouth disease; about 30% of the national herd, 3.32 million head, culled	KREI Agriculture Policy Focus 2012
2016	KREI paper: a 10 ㎍/㎥ rise in fine dust lifts the next week’s samgyeopsal spending by ₩23.9	KREI Journal of Rural Economics
2019.9.17	First domestic outbreak of African swine fever, in Yeondasan-dong, Paju, Gyeonggi-do	Korean Wikipedia
2021.9	samgyeopsal enters the Oxford English Dictionary	OED official blog
2024	Per-capita pork consumption about 30 kg; samgyeopsal the favorite cut at 60.0%	KREI, Korea Meat Trade Association

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When Did Samgyeopsal Become a National Food?

By the numbers, it began in the 1980s and solidified in the 1990s. The 1980s are the decade when per-capita pork consumption nearly doubled in ten years.

🥓 Annual per-capita meat consumption, 1980–2024 (kg, Korea Meat Trade Association)

Year	Beef	Pork	Chicken	Total
1980	2.62	6.34	2.38	11.34
1985	2.92	8.41	3.07	14.40
1990	4.13	11.78	4.00	19.91
1995	6.72	14.75	5.98	27.45
2000	8.51	16.50	6.92	31.93
2005	6.74	17.82	7.58	32.14
2010	8.83	19.25	10.69	38.77
2015	10.90	22.80	13.40	47.10
2020	13.00	26.00	14.70	53.70
2024	15.00	30.90	15.50	61.40

From 6.34 kg in 1980 to 30.90 kg in 2024, per-capita pork consumption grew about 4.9 times. Over the same period beef grew 5.7 times and chicken 6.5 times — higher growth rates — but in absolute volume pork now more than doubles both beef and chicken.

Different institutions give slightly different numbers. The Korea Rural Economic Institute’s Agricultural Outlook 2025 estimates 2024 per-capita pork consumption at 30.0 kg — up 1.4% from 29.6 kg a year earlier. The same source puts chicken at 15.2 kg and beef at 14.9 kg. The gap between the association’s 30.90 kg and the institute’s 30.0 kg comes down to different calculation bases, so it’s safest to read the figure as about 30 kg.

Be careful with international comparisons. Under the FAO’s food-supply measure, Korea’s 2023 per-capita pork supply was 39.71 kg — but that’s based on carcass weight and supply, so it can’t be compared directly with the domestic 30 kg figure. Where Korea ranks globally was not confirmed within the scope of this check.

The 1997 financial crisis is a point people often misread on this curve. The IMF didn’t create samgyeopsal. Look at the table: consumption was already high by the mid-1990s. What the crisis did was different. It fixed the dish’s meaning as cheap consolation — so much so that the coinage “IMF samgyeopsal” was born. That’s also the backdrop for how soju and samgyeopsal became the default office-dinner menu from the 1990s on.

Why Does Korea Import Samgyeopsal Instead of Loin?

Because one pig yields surprisingly little samgyeopsal. From a 110 kg live pig you get only about 10 kg of samgyeopsal. Sixty percent of the country wants the same cut, yet not even a tenth of the animal is that cut.

🥓 Imported pork by cut — Jan–Jul cumulative, base year to be reconfirmed (Korea Meat Trade Association)

Cut	Import volume (tonnes)	Share
Samgyeopsal	148,013	about 44.8%
Shoulder	133,043	about 40.2%
Neck	26,104	about 7.9%
Loin	11,074	about 3.4%
Hind leg	6,998	about 2.1%
Ribs	4,633	about 1.4%
Other	690	about 0.2%
Total	330,555	100%

This table is a country’s palate rendered as data. Samgyeopsal and shoulder together make up 85%. Loin imports barely clear 3%. Considering that loin is the priciest cut in Western pork markets, this table looks upside down.

Korean and imported pork also differ in the flesh. The Korea Pork Producers Association describes domestic samgyeopsal as a full cut, 1.5–2 times thicker than imported, with a vivid red color. It also says domestic pork reaches the table within 3–7 days of slaughter, while imported takes over a month and mostly arrives frozen. Bear in mind this comes from a domestic pork-interest group, so it’s best read as an industry claim.

Epidemics have shaken this supply structure too. During the 2010–2011 foot-and-mouth outbreak, about 30% of the national herd — 3.32 million head — was culled. By March 2012 the sow count had recovered to 97% of pre-outbreak levels, but the hastily added replacement gilts were only 85% as productive as normal sows, and 8–10% of consumers reported lower pork quality. Then, on September 17, 2019, African swine fever was first detected in Korea, at a farm in Yeondasan-dong, Paju, Gyeonggi-do.

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How Many Faces Has Samgyeopsal Evolved Into?

One cut has kept reselling itself in new forms for forty years. Below are the forms confirmed by records. I’ve left out any whose timing couldn’t be verified.

From the late 2000s, flavoring and aging came into vogue — wine aging, pine-needle smoking, herbs, and the like. Samgyeopsal’s original principle is to season it with nothing at all, yet from this period products that deliberately broke that rule started selling. The exact years of each trend haven’t been confirmed.

One side story about a neighboring cut: galmaegisal is the diaphragm muscle separated when deboning the ribs. Its name is a corruption of garomaksal (“diaphragm meat”), and has nothing to do with seagulls.

Why Do Diners Grill It Themselves?

Because that’s the very definition of the dish. The Oxford English Dictionary says so.

In September 2021, the Oxford English Dictionary added or updated 26 words of Korean origin. Banchan, bulgogi, galbi, chimaek, mukbang, hallyu, kimbap, japchae, K-drama, PC bang, skinship, and others all went in — and samgyeopsal was among them. What stands out is the definition.

The dictionary deliberately wrote into the definition that diners cook it themselves on a tabletop grill. Samgyeopsal was entered not as a plated dish but as a format that includes the act of cooking. That’s how the world sees the dish — and it’s also exactly where foreigners get most confused at a Korean BBQ joint. Nobody cooks for you; you’re handed raw meat and a pair of tongs.

The defining feature of the gogitjip (meat house) as a business is that no chef cooks — the guest grills. The service style is mixed, too: banchan arrives all at once, while meat comes out separately with each order.

Exceptions are growing, though. At places handling premium cuts, staff-grilling service has spread. Reactions are split: some guests want to grill themselves, while others find it awkward to have a server standing at the table during a private conversation. In short: staff may come grill for you, or nobody may come. Both are normal.

Why Isn't Rice Served First?

It’s economics, not culture. Fill up early and you’ll eat less meat.

According to an explanation widely known in the trade, BBQ restaurants don’t bring rice up front. Instead, after you’ve finished the meat, they serve rice and stew — or naengmyeon — as a sort of dessert. So the order of finishing with doenjang-jjigae and naengmyeon is a product of the business structure rather than tradition. It’s based on secondary sources, so I won’t state it as fact — but it’s the most persuasive answer to the question foreigners ask most.

The ssam (wrap) wasn’t invented by samgyeopsal, either. It’s the result of the Joseon-era sangchu ssambap (lettuce-wrapped rice) tradition merging with samgyeopsal and evolving. Grilled meat goes onto a leaf of raw or pickled vegetable, ssamjang on top, and the whole thing goes in one bite. Lettuce, perilla leaves, ssamjang, sesame-oil sauce, garlic, pickled vegetables, and kimchi are the basic setup. When the habits of adding pajeori (scallion salad) or grilling kimchi and bean sprouts on the pan began isn’t confirmed.

Does Bad Air Sell More Samgyeopsal?

It does. But the folk belief that samgyeopsal washes fine dust out of your system has no scientific basis. Keep the two things separate.

A 2016 paper in the Journal of Rural Economics, published by the Korea Rural Economic Institute, tested this folk belief with data. Combining the Rural Development Administration’s 2010–2014 consumer-panel survey with Korea Environment Corporation fine-dust measurements and analyzing them with a panel Tobit model, the researchers found this: when the week’s average fine-dust concentration rises by 10 ㎍/㎥, the following week’s average samgyeopsal spending rises by ₩23.9.

The researchers consider this hard to explain with rational economic theory, interpreting it as a psychological emotional shift and defensive posture among consumers facing rising fine dust. To sum up: the idea that pork fat washes dust from your throat doesn’t hold up medically, but the behavior of people who believe it genuinely shows up in purchase data.

What Is Samgyeopsal Day on March 3?

It’s a promotional anniversary set by livestock cooperatives on a date where the number 3 repeats, aimed at boosting pig farmers’ income.

The date logic is simple: March 3 doubles the number 3, matching the sam (“three”) in samgyeopsal. Retailers ran pork discounts on the day again in 2025, and early March remains the supermarkets’ pork-promotion season every year.

The often-cited founding year and place of origin couldn’t be confirmed for this article. A 2003 founding and a particular regional cooperative’s origin story circulate widely, but the original source couldn’t be located. Scale figures like discount rates or sales volumes also remain unconfirmed.

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So What Has Samgyeopsal Become?

It became a national food because it was cheap — and once it became a national food, it stopped being cheap. That’s the ninety-year conclusion.

Some accounts say that until the mid-1990s samgyeopsal held around ₩600 per 100g — cheaper than other pork cuts. Then, from the mid-1990s, popularity and price rose together. Today’s domestic samgyeopsal prices bear no comparison to that era. The detailed price structure and the serving-size question are covered in other articles on this site.

Compressed into a sequence, the history runs like this. Koreans already knew the meat between the belly and hind leg. The smell made them boil it. Breed improvement and castration removed the smell, and grilling became possible. Gas arrived, and everyone grilled anywhere. The financial crisis attached the meaning of cheap consolation to its taste. And when too many people wanted the same cut, Korea started importing samgyeopsal.

Like English Wikipedia’s misdated entry, the history of this dish still holds plenty of wrong years and unverified folk theories — the story about Japan buying only lean cuts among them. If you sit down at a grill this evening, it’s worth recalling the name printed in a newspaper ninety years ago: segyeopsal.