The concept of frying chicken in Korea has its beginning during the
Korean War, when American troops were stationed in
South Korea during the late-1940s, and the early-1950s. Traditionally, Koreans steamed chicken for consumption, and chicken dishes usually came in soups and broth. This all changed however, when Americans began placing stalls selling soul-food American fried chicken, focusing on the four areas of
Seoul,
Busan,
Pyeongtaek and
Songtan.
[11]
The modern trend of eating chicken began in Korea during the late 1960s, when Myeongdong Yeongyang Center in Seoul began selling whole chicken roasted over an electric oven.
[12]
The first Korean fried chicken franchise, Lims Chicken, was established in 1977 in the basement of
Shinsegae Department Store, Chungmu-ro,
Seoul [13][12] by Yu Seok-ho. Yu stated that his idea of selling smaller, individual pieces of fried chicken in Korea came along in 1975 when he went to go study abroad in the United States. He began frying chicken there, and received accolades for creating '
ginseng chicken'. He started his business in Korea with six pieces of fried chicken between ￦280 to ￦330, and sold around 900 pieces as his beginning career.
[11]
The well-known variety with spicy coatings, also known as
yangnyeom-chikin, had its history begin in 1982 by Yang Hee-Kwon, who was running
Pelicana Chicken at
Daejeon. He noticed that customers in his restaurant were struggling to chew on the hard, crisp layers of the fried chicken, and led to inconveniences such as scraped
palates. Yang decided to pull a twist on the traditional fried chicken to soften the hard shells of the chicken, and appease more Korean customers by marinating it sweet, and spicy.
[12] Yang states that despite the spicy flavor, the very first
yangnyeom-chikin did not include
gochujang as one of their marinating ingredients.
[11]
In recent years, owing to
market saturation in Korea, many of Korea's major fried chicken chains, such as Mexicana Chicken, Genesis BBQ, Kyochon Chicken and Pelicana Chicken, have expanded to set up new presences in the
United States,
China,
Canada, and
Southeast Asia.
[14]
Korean fried Chicken is as Korean as Chop Suey and General Tso chicken is Chinese.
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