Budae-jjigae부대찌개

The "budae" in budae-jjigae (부대찌개) means "military base," but this was never soldiers' food. It grew up around U.S. Army bases in the lean years after the Korean War, when people in Gyeonggi Province towns such as Uijeongbu, Dongducheon and Songtan got hold of ham and sausages from the bases ("base meat," as it was called) and simmered them with gochujang and kimchi. Early versions sometimes used food the soldiers had left over. In the 1960s the dish was also nicknamed "Johnson-tang," after U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Uijeongbu is known as its hometown. A woman who ran a street stall there from 1960 began serving it with sausage, ham and bacon from a nearby base, and the restaurant she formally opened in 1968 became famous as the original. It started out as a drinking snack of ham, sausage, cabbage and onion fried in butter in a shallow pan, and only later became a spicy stew with gochujang, kimchi and stock. And the instant noodles everyone adds today? Not in the 1960s: instant ramen first arrived in Korea in 1963 and at first was far too expensive to toss into a stew.

By the 1960s and '70s it had become a cheap favorite for factory workers eating out together. Each base town has its own twist: plenty of green onion in Paju, kimchi at the center in Uijeongbu, a mix of processed meats in Dongducheon, and sometimes chili beans in Songtan and Osan. Today a whole street of budae-jjigae restaurants lines the area near Uijeongbu Jungang Station.