Samgyeopsal삼겹살

Samgyeopsal means "three-layer flesh," after its stripes of lean meat and fat, and the cut used to be called segyeopsal. A 1934 Dong-A Ilbo article named the segyeopsal between the hind leg and the belly as the tastiest part of the pig, and a 1957 cookbook described sliced boiled pork as segyeopsal boiled and thinly cut. Even in early-1980s newspapers, samgyeopsal was treated as a colloquial name. Until then the cut was mostly steamed, boiled and sliced, or braised.

Restaurants specializing in grilled samgyeopsal seem to have appeared in the late 1970s. In 1983 the Kyunghyang Shinmun referred to Samgak-dong in Seoul as "samgyeopsal alley," and a novel printed in the same paper in 1980 pictured an early grill house: pork belly sizzling on a foil-lined iron plate set over a coal-briquette stove. All that fat made for flames and smoke over charcoal or briquettes, but from the mid-1980s portable gas stoves and butane canisters spread, making it easy to grill not only at restaurants but at home and outdoors.

When recession followed the 1997 financial crisis, the phrase "IMF samgyeopsal" was coined, so firmly had it become the affordable meal out, and "samgyeopsal and soju" became a fixture of Korean life. After a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, the city of Paju in Gyeonggi Province and the local livestock cooperative even declared March 3 (3/3) "Samgyeopsal Day" to help pig farmers.