A Gyopo In Korea: A Short Note On Traveling As A Vegetarian

I’m Dylan, a 3rd generation Korean-American, and I’ll be living in Seoul for three months. In that time, I hope to improve my near non-existent Korean skills and experience the culture that I’ve been removed from. In this series, I’ll be detailing those experiences. If you’re not caught up, you can catch the other chapters here.

I’m not a vegetarian.

But I do think that traveling to Korea as a vegetarian might be a tough experience for some, especially if you can’t speak Korean well. For me, I’m not used to eating pork. It’s not a religious thing—well, not really. It is for my grandparents and their children, but my parents didn’t to raise us religiously. So, while I can eat pork, I never developed a taste for it as my parents never fed it to me. In Korea, though, I knew I wouldn’t be able to always identify whenever a dish had pork in it or not, and I didn’t mind enough to ask if it did, so I decided to expand my horizons and just be open to sitting down at a random restaurant and picking something off the menu. The other day, I ordered sundae ramyun, which, despite the unfortunate romanization, does not mean ice cream ramyun—it’s a type of sausage made of cow or pig intestines. In my case, pig intestines.

I did not know this when I ordered the ramen, and let me tell you: when I entered the hangul into Papago or Google Translate and it spat “sundae” back out, I had no idea what to make of it. I don’t particularly like intestines, and I had never tried those of a pig. It was interesting, to say the least. Though I did not eat all of the intestines, it was still a very tasty meal and I’m glad I had it. Instant ramyun prepped in a restaurant is always better than if you were to just make it with the ingredients in the packet at home; the noodles are cooked just right so that they’re soft but still incredibly chewy, and it goes without saying that broth prepared in a kitchen will always be better than the powder.

Perhaps, if it was ice cream sundae ramyun, then it would have entered the realm of disgusting.

As a vegetarian, even knowing how to ask “Does this have any meat in it?” in Korean will not save you. The first reason for this is, if you order a soup, the broth is likely meat-based. The second reason for this is, from what I gather, the Korean understanding of the word for “meat” is different from an English speaker’s understanding of the word. My mother and sister are vegetarians, but they aren’t strict. When my mom asked if there was meat in the hangover soup they ordered, our waiter said no, but asked if they were fine with cow-based broth. My mom said yes. When their soups arrived, 50% of the volume content was cow tripe.

This isn’t to say that all the best Korean food is meat-based; that would be reductive. Many of my favorite Korean dishes are vegetarian or pescatarian. While you may miss out on some great parts of Korean cuisine, I think it’s still possible to have an amazing time. In fact, in my next post, I’ll be talking about one of the best vegetarian meals I’ve ever had, which happened to be in Korea.