10-Side Lunch Box for $6.50 — GS25 Late Night Feed

Why I Walked to a Convenience Store at 2am

April 2026, Daejeon — a mid-sized city in central South Korea. Around 2am my stomach started carrying on, so I opened the fridge and found absolutely nothing worth cooking at that hour. The missus was flat out with work so I wasn't about to ask her, and cooking a single serve of rice just for myself felt like way too much effort. I pulled up a delivery app, but not a single joint was taking orders — no fried chicken, no Chinese, nothing. So I chucked on my thongs and shuffled five minutes down the road to the local GS25 convenience store.

That's where I spotted the Hyejarowun Hansang Dosirak 2 — basically a premium ready-made lunch box packed with sides. I'd tried a similar convenience store lunch box from this range before and it was decent, so I grabbed one again. At ₩5,900 (roughly A$6.50), plus a drink, it was the only way I was getting a hot feed at that hour. Thank goodness for 24-hour convenience stores.

What the Packaging Looks Like

The front of the box features a photo of Kim Hyeja — a beloved Korean actress and the namesake behind this lunch box series — along with a message that roughly translates to "for those days when you miss a warm home-cooked meal, eat up properly." Reading that alone at 2am hit a bit different, I'll be honest. The label showed a price of ₩5,900 (about A$6.50), a net weight of 479 grams, and 818 kilocalories. The previous version I'd tried was ₩5,400 (around A$6), so it's gone up about 50 cents, but the side dish lineup looked more varied this time. I carried it home with a fair bit of optimism.

Cracking Open the Lid

Peeled the label off and popped the lid — straight away you can see a slab of Spam sitting on top of the rice in the main compartment, with two sections of red spicy meat on the left taking up a fair bit of real estate. Up top there's a couple of quail eggs, gimjaban (dried seaweed crumbled and seasoned — a classic Korean side), battered and seasoned fried pieces, bean sprouts, and an egg omelette slice. Not a single compartment left empty.

Top-Down View With the Plastic Off

Once I pulled off the plastic film and looked down from above, I counted ten compartments — every single one filled. The big centre section has rice topped with Spam, the left side has two compartments of spicy red meat, and across the top row you've got stir-fried fish cake, battered bits, stir-fried kimchi, bean sprouts, egg omelette, quail eggs, and seaweed flakes. For a convenience store lunch box at around A$6.50, the spread looks generous — but the compartments are pretty shallow, so the real test would be whether there's actually enough to eat. I bunged it in the microwave for two and a half minutes and sat down at the table.

Going Through Each Side Dish

Chicken, Stir-Fried Kimchi, and Potato

The chicken in the left compartment sits somewhere between sweet crispy chicken and plain fried — not quite either. The texture's not crunchy and not soggy either, just this in-between thing, but for microwaved chicken in a meal box it's honestly not bad at all. Next to it you've got stir-fried kimchi and shredded stir-fried potato side by side, though the potato shreds had done a runner and escaped into the kimchi compartment — must've shifted while I was walking home. The stir-fried kimchi was my favourite side from the last version, so I was keen to see if it held up again.

Fish Cake and Braised Quail Eggs

Three slices of eomuk — Korean fish cake, which is made from processed fish paste pressed into flat sheets, then sliced and braised in soy sauce — stacked on top of each other, with two braised quail eggs in the compartment below. The fish cake had a sprinkle of sesame seeds but looked fairly lightly seasoned based on the pale colour. As for the quail eggs — they're tiny eggs simmered in a sweet soy glaze, and you only get two, so that's literally one per bite. A bit stingy, that.

Spinach Namul

Sigumchi namul is blanched spinach dressed with sesame oil, salt, and sesame seeds — one of the most common Korean side dishes going. In this lunch box they've been fairly heavy-handed with the soy sauce, giving it an almost dark colour and a noticeably salty punch. On its own it's a bit much, but piled on top of rice it balances out nicely. You only get about one chopstick-full, but wedged between all the rich, oily sides it does a good job of resetting your palate.

Jeyuk Bokkeum — Tasty But Gone Too Quick

Jeyuk bokkeum is pork stir-fried in a gochujang-based sauce — think spicy, savoury, and punchy. I picked up a piece with my chopsticks and it came up with bits of spring onion and sesame clinging to it. The moment it hit my tongue, this wave of spicy-salty flavour spread right through. It's the kind of side where one bite of meat automatically demands a big scoop of rice to go with it. The problem? With ten compartments to fill, the star of the show doesn't get much room. Three or four pieces and you're staring at an empty section. Gone in two or three mouthfuls.

Ketchup Ham Stir-Fry — Watch Your Rice

This one's thinly sliced ham tossed in a ketchup-like sauce. You'd expect sweetness first, but it's actually the saltiness that hits you. Eating it on its own is properly salty — you need a big spoonful of rice to even things out. Just like the jeyuk bokkeum before it, this side absolutely chews through your rice supply. Ten compartments of sides but only one compartment of rice — I was starting to get a sneaking suspicion I'd run out of rice well before the sides were done.

Seasoned Dumplings — Look, This Was a Miss

The seasoned dumplings — honestly, these were a letdown. The dumpling itself is a pretty standard meat dumpling, nothing wrong with that, but they've slathered it in this sweet-and-spicy sauce that just doesn't work with it at all. If they'd just left it as a plain dumpling I could've dipped it in soy sauce and been happy. Apparently these seasoned dumplings pop up across the whole Hyejarowun lunchbox range, which is a shame — I reckon they should've chucked in more stir-fried kimchi instead.

The Spam on Rice, and the Moment You Run Out

Now for the Spam on rice. For anyone not familiar, Spam is a canned pork product that's absolutely massive in Korea — people eat it on rice, chuck it in kimchi stew, and it's even a go-to gift set item. After microwaving, the edges had a light sheen of oil and that classic salty aroma coming off it. Bite into it with a mouthful of rice and it's just good — simple as that. But there's only one slice, so even rationing it out, you're done in three or four bites.

Picking it up with chopsticks, the slice is actually a decent thickness. Interestingly, it tasted less salty than the Spam I'm used to — whether they've used a lower-sodium version for the lunch box or it's a different product altogether, I'm not sure, but it worked in its favour. The whole meal box skews salty overall, so if the Spam had been full-strength as well it would've been too much. Eaten with rice, you get this savoury, almost buttery flavour first.

Last Piece of Spicy Pork

The very last piece of jeyuk bokkeum. Still tasted great — but that was genuinely it. I had over half my rice left and the best side dish was already gone. Bit deflating, that.

Sweet Chicken — Solid for a Convenience Store

Picked up a piece of dakgangjeong — Korean sweet crispy chicken. It's not crunchy, obviously, since it's been through a microwave. But rather than being unpleasantly soggy, it's more of a soft chew, which was fine. There's a decent amount of actual chicken inside, and the sweet glaze had soaked through nicely. For a convenience store meal box side dish, it was perfectly good.

Seasoned Dumplings, One More Go — Still No Good

Gave the seasoned dumplings one last crack and — yeah, nah. The sauce had properly soaked into the wrapper, making it soggy and limp, while the filling inside was just plain mince with nothing much going on. The whole thing ends up bland and wet. If this one compartment had been literally any other side dish, the overall satisfaction would've jumped up massively. Can't help thinking that.

Use-By Dates and Quality Control — Why Convenience Store Meals Are Safe

The label on the lunch box shows both the manufacture date and the use-by date. This one was made on 26 April 2026 at 8am, with a use-by of 28 April 2026 at 8am — so a 48-hour window. Once that time passes, the barcode literally won't scan at the register, meaning it's physically impossible to sell. Every lunch box sitting on the shelf is guaranteed to be within date, so as long as the fridge is doing its job, you really don't need to stress about freshness. The label colour even changes depending on the production time — red or blue — which is how staff manage stock rotation.

Final Verdict on the Hyejarowun Hansang Lunchbox 2

Whether it's 2am or 4am, as long as there's stock on the shelf you can grab one, nuke it for two and a half minutes, and have a proper hot meal. Prices have crept up, sure, but at ₩5,900 (about A$6.50) it's still cheaper than eating out or ordering in. Getting ten-plus different sides in a single meal box is a genuine strength of this series, and the fact that expired stock literally can't be sold at the checkout is reassuring from a food safety angle.

The flip side of having heaps of variety is that you're bound to cop a side or two you're not keen on. The seasoned dumplings were exactly that for me this time. That's a subjective taste thing, but you should go in knowing that one or two of those ten compartments might not land for you. And because there are so many sides, each one is basically a tasting portion — when something as good as the spicy pork runs out after three or four pieces, it stings a little. But the name Hyejarowun Hansang literally means "a generous full table," and the whole point is giving you a little bit of everything. On that front, it delivers exactly what it promises.

3am, Rinsing Out an Empty Lunch Box

After polishing off the lot, I plonked the empty container on the sink and checked the clock — past 3am. It'd only been an hour since I'd shuffled out in my thongs because I couldn't be bothered cooking, and now I was full, warm, and had zero dishes to wash. I switched off the light, crawled into bed, and told myself I'd cook a proper meal tomorrow. But let's be real — I knew full well I'd probably end up doing the exact same thing again.