How to Eat Sundae Gukbap — Pork Bone Soup Done Right

Walking Into a Neighborhood Soup Joint After a Night Shift

My wife and I were walking home this morning after I finished a night shift. We were cutting through a back alley in Daejeon, a major city about an hour and a half south of Seoul, and this smell of pork bone soup hit us from somewhere around the corner. It was April but the morning air was still cold, my stomach was completely empty, and honestly nothing else was going to fix that except a hot bowl of something. In Korea, there's a thing people do after working all night — you grab a bowl of hot soup for breakfast like it's a hangover cure. That soup is sundae gukbap. If you're Korean, you know exactly what it is. It's a milky pork bone soup with Korean blood sausage and rice, and it's available at little no-name shops tucked into practically every neighborhood in the country. It's perfect for eating solo and it's one of the most affordable full meals you can get. I told my wife, "Let's go in there," and she looked at the sign and said, "You know I can't eat sundae." "They have pork soup too." That one sentence was enough. We walked in. We didn't plan to come here — we just smelled it and followed our noses.

One sundae gukbap, one pork soup with rice. $6.50 each, so about $13 total for two people. Korean pork bone soup at this price fills you up completely, even for breakfast. It was early morning, so we were the only customers.

My wife is a foreigner, but she's been living with me in Korea long enough that she actually likes soup-and-rice dishes now. Sundae, though — that's a different story. The blood sausage has congealed pig's blood inside, and that's a hard no for her. So whenever we go to a soup shop, she always orders the plain pork version instead. Plenty of Koreans can't eat sundae either, by the way. It's not a foreigner thing — it's just a personal preference thing.

We Ordered Two Bowls and the Entire Table Was Covered

We ordered one sundae gukbap and one pork soup. That's it — two bowls. But somehow the entire table was covered. When my wife first ate at a Korean restaurant, she looked at all the dishes and asked, "Did we order all of this?" No, this is just how Korea works. You order one main dish and the side dishes show up automatically. No extra charge, and if you run out, you just say "more please" and they bring it right over.

You Cut the Kimchi with Scissors

The kimchi came out whole — full uncut leaves. Don't try to shove a whole piece in your mouth. Every Korean restaurant has scissors on the table, and you just cut it into bite-sized pieces. Yeah, using scissors on food is a thing here. It might seem weird at first, but it's completely normal. My wife froze the first time she held food scissors, just staring at them like "what am I supposed to do with these?" Now she grabs them before I do.

Cubed Radish Kimchi, Chili Peppers, and the Side Dishes

Kkakdugi — cubed radish kimchi. It's got a serious crunch to it. My move is to have three or four spoonfuls of soup, pop one piece of kkakdugi, then go back to the soup. You alternate back and forth like that so you don't get tired of one flavor.

Cheongyang chili peppers. You dip them in ssamjang (a thick fermented bean paste) and bite right in. These are pretty high on the heat scale for Korean peppers. My wife once bit into a whole one without thinking and had to drink three glasses of water. If it's your first time, just nibble the very tip to gauge the spice level first.

Side dishes vary from restaurant to restaurant. This place gave us sautéed mushrooms, but somewhere else it might be spinach or bean sprouts. Kimchi and kkakdugi are the only two constants at every soup shop across the country — everything else just depends on what the kitchen felt like making that day.

The Broth and What's Inside the Bowl

The broth is completely white. That milky color comes from simmering pork bones for hours and hours — think of it like the Korean equivalent of a rich tonkotsu ramen broth, but thinner and unseasoned. It looks bland at first. But stir it once with your spoon and suddenly sundae, sliced boiled pork, and offal float up from the bottom. My wife leaned over to peek into my bowl and shook her head: "Yeah, I could never eat that." Her pork soup didn't have any of that stuff in it, so she was safe.

Boiled Pork Slices — The Star of Dwaeji Gukbap

This is the boiled pork — sliced pieces with the skin still on. It's not mushy at all; there's a nice chewy bite to it. Because it's been simmering in the broth for so long, there's no gamey pork smell whatsoever. Even my wife eats this cut just fine. If you order dwaeji gukbap (the plain pork version), this is mostly what you get, so anyone who's nervous about offal should just go with that.

Sundae — Looks Strange, but Hear Me Out

This is sundae. It's pork intestine casing stuffed with glass noodles and congealed pig's blood, which is why it looks so dark. I asked my wife, "Want to try just one piece?" She picked it up with her chopsticks, stared at it for a while, then put it back down. "Maybe next time..." she said, but her eyes told me that next time was never coming. The flavor is actually pretty mild — some people even find it bland. That's why you dip it in the seasoning paste or eat it soaked in the broth.

How to Eat Sundae Gukbap — You Season It Yourself

Here's the part that matters most. Sundae gukbap arrives at your table almost completely unseasoned. If you just eat it as-is, it'll taste like nothing. The whole point is that you use whatever's on the table to build the flavor yourself.

Adding Kkakdugi Juice

Some people spoon the liquid from the kkakdugi container right into their soup. I don't usually do this myself, but that radish kimchi juice is tangy and a little spicy, so when it mixes into the white broth, it genuinely changes the flavor profile.

Seasoning with Chili Paste and Salted Shrimp

I dropped in one spoonful of the chili seasoning paste. It's a red mix based on chili flakes and garlic, and the second it hits the white broth, everything turns spicy and ruddy. More than half of Koreans add this. If you can handle spice, go for a full spoon. If you're sensitive, start with half.

Salted shrimp — saeujeot. This does something completely different from the chili paste. It's not about heat; it's about umami. It's basically Korea's answer to fish sauce — fermented baby shrimp that adds a deep savory kick to the broth. The first time I showed my wife the jar, she popped the lid and immediately covered her nose. "What IS that?" I mean yeah, it's fermented shrimp, so it has a smell. But I convinced her to taste the soup after I stirred some in, and she actually said, "It tastes totally different from before." Salt just makes things salty. Salted shrimp adds something extra on top — that hard-to-name depth of flavor.

If it's still not salty enough, you can add regular salt. But be careful — dump in too much at once and it's game over, way too salty, no going back. Add a tiny bit, stir, taste. Still not enough? Add a tiny bit more. You have to stir it in. Otherwise one side of the bowl is salty and the other side is bland.

If there's perilla seed powder on the table, try tossing some in. It adds a nutty flavor and cuts through the richness of the pork broth. I told my wife to try it in her pork soup too, and after she did she said, "Okay, this is way better now." It's not a must, but if it's sitting right there, give it a shot.

Pile On the Chives — This Is the Final Step

Now pile on the chives. After the salted shrimp and chili paste, you can see the broth color is completely different from when it first arrived. Adding chives on top tones down the porky smell and makes the whole thing taste fresher. Don't be stingy. The more the better.

The broth is so hot the chives wilt almost instantly. You want to eat them right after they go in. Grab a spoonful of slightly wilted chives with a piece of sundae and some pork all together — after working all night on an empty stomach, that first loaded spoonful just hit different. I felt my whole body unclench.

All the Different Cuts Inside Sundae Gukbap

Sundae gukbap doesn't just have one type of meat in it. There's boiled pork, skin, head meat — all mixed together, and every restaurant does it a little differently. Each cut has its own texture, so as you eat your way through the bowl, you keep hitting something new. It never gets monotonous.

Honest Take

My wife finished her pork soup and drank the broth down to the last drop. I asked if it was good. She nodded and then said, "But watching you eat yours — yeah, I really can't do the sundae." I had loaded my sundae gukbap with a mountain of chives and drained every last bit of broth. Same restaurant, same base broth, but we ordered different things and both walked out full and happy.

If this is your first time with sundae gukbap, I'll be honest — the hardest part is the first spoonful. It looks unfamiliar and there's a smell. But once you push past that, it clicks. Even I have days where I'm not in the mood for it, but on a morning like today — freezing cold, stomach empty after an all-night shift — that first spoonful of hot pork bone soup with seasoning and chives just takes over. You physically can't stop eating.

If sundae isn't your thing, order dwaeji gukbap instead. If even that's too much, look for a seolleongtang place — that's beef bone soup with no pork smell at all, and my wife actually loves it. Or try kongnamul gukbap, which is mostly bean sprouts with barely any meat, so it's the easiest entry point. Korea has a huge variety of soup-and-rice dishes, so if one doesn't work for you, don't write off the whole category. There's always another bowl to try.

This post was originally published on https://hi-jsb.blog.