Korean Bakery Culture: From Postwar Bread to Bread Tours

Bread arrived in Korea relatively late, and it became everyday food even later. Yet the bakery (ppangjip, 빵집) is now as familiar a part of a Korean neighborhood as a convenience store, and a few shops have become destinations in their own right. Here is how that happened.

Colonial roots

A Korean newspaper report on Gunsan's bread culture notes that bread first reached Korea through Catholic priests, but that modern bread-making took off under Japanese rule when Japanese technicians brought baking skills and many bakeries opened in the 1920s. By the 1940s, the report says, Korean workers in bread and confectionery outnumbered Japanese workers by more than two to one. The early Western-style confectioners are also covered in hangwa and colonial-era food.

Many of the oldest shops trace themselves to this world. In Gunsan, Iseongdang stands on the site of a Japanese-run confectionery called Izumoya, which dates from 1920; after liberation a Korean confectioner, Yi Seok-woo, opened Iseongdang there. In Seoul, Taegeukdang was founded in 1946 in Myeongdong, using equipment left behind by a departing Japanese owner, and it moved to Jangchung-dong in 1974. A Seoul city feature describes its early range as Japanese-style biscuits and fruit candies, and later sarada bread, castella and butter cake.

Postwar flour

After the Korean War, American aid wheat and the government's flour-promotion drives (see bunsik culture) made bread and noodles ordinary foods. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture says the campaign moved the national staple toward rice and wheat and helped form a Western-influenced food culture that included ramyeon and bread. In Daejeon, Seongsimdang began in 1956 as a steamed-bun stall in front of the railway station, started with two bags of flour; it still follows a same-day baking rule and has stayed in its home city apart from a few direct-run shops.

Chains and neighborhood shops

The popularization of bread also fueled a franchise boom. A Kyunghyang Shinmun feature on bakeries describes large chains such as Paris Baguette and Tous les Jours expanding aggressively, supported by the bake-off system in which partly prepared frozen dough is finished in-store. Many independent neighborhood bakeries closed as chains moved in. The surviving independents often differentiate through ingredients, long fermentation and handwork, and make everything from dough to oven themselves.

Bread as a destination

Korean bread culture has a strong regional streak. Gunsan, a small city, draws visitors to Iseongdang and to other local bakeries, including one known for a white glutinous-barley loaf. Iseongdang has also made bread with rice flour since 2006, with a red-bean bun among its signatures. Daejeon is similarly associated with Seongsimdang, whose fried soboro and chive bread are patented creations, according to a report on its history. Bakery-hopping trips of this kind are a recent travel habit rather than an old tradition.

A distinctly Korean bakery shelf

• Sweet red-bean buns, soboro (crumble-topped) buns and cream buns: descendants of Japanese-style breads that took root locally.
• Rice-flour breads and tteok-filled loaves: reflecting a taste for chewy textures (see tteok).
• Savory bakes and sandwiches: which many Koreans eat as a light meal, in a country where meals have traditionally centered on rice (see rice in Korean culture).

Bakeries today sit between the old shop and the corporate chain, and between the loaf as a snack and as a meal.