Bungeo-ppang붕어빵

Bungeo-ppang (붕어빵) is generally believed to come from Japan's taiyaki, a sea bream-shaped cake filled with red bean paste. Taiyaki is said to have been first made at a Tokyo confectioner in 1909, and its ancestor is usually named as imagawayaki, a similar cake baked in round molds. When this kind of batter cake reached Korea in the 1930s, the sea bream became a crucian carp (bungeo). One explanation for the fish shape is that fish like carp and sea bream were common but too expensive for many people, so a fish you could afford became a treat.

From then on, bungeo-ppang settled in as a cheap lunch for working people and a winter snack. Ahead of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, stalls briefly vanished from main roads because they were seen as spoiling the look of the streets.

The fish came back with the financial crisis at the end of 1997, when people who had lost their jobs started baking bungeo-ppang on the street again. More recently it has found new fans among younger Koreans, enough that there is now an app that maps nearby bungeo-ppang stalls.