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Sundae at Gwangjang Market: 12 Verdicts on Korean Blood Sausage

Travel Analysts

📄43 reviews of Gwangjang Market name sundae and 12 say how it tasted: 5 liked it, 6 did not. What it comes with, what it cost, and what first-timers report.

A guide holds out a plate of tteokbokki to a tour group at a Seoul market stall whose red banner lists glutinous-rice sundae, trotters, japchae and mayak gimbap

💡Quick Answer

Is the sundae at Gwangjang Market good? Reviews are split. Forty-three reviews of Gwangjang Market name sundae, the Korean blood sausage, and 12 say how it tasted: five liked it, six did not and one called it ordinary. For mandu at the same market, 31 of 39 verdicts are good. Seven reviews order or name it with tteokbokki, and a set of both with gimbap cost one reviewer 10,000 won in 2025.

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Is the Sundae at Gwangjang Market Good? Twelve Verdicts, Split

Reviewers describe stall after stall at Gwangjang Market selling sundae, and plenty of reviews mention it. Few say what it was like to eat. We read all of them.

🍽️ What reviews of Gwangjang Market say about sundae	Reviews
Name sundae	2.9% (43)
Say how it tasted	12
🟢 Liked it	5
🟡 Called it ordinary	1
🔴 Did not like it, or could not eat it	6
Tell readers to try it, without a verdict of their own	6
For comparison: mandu at Gwangjang Market	31 good of 39 verdicts

Forty-three of 1,458 reviews of Gwangjang Market name sundae: 2.9%. Twelve say how it tasted. Five liked it, one called it ordinary, and six did not like it or could not eat it.

For comparison, 39 reviews of the same market say how the mandu tasted, and 31 of them call it good. Sundae is the order on which reviewers disagree.

Another six reviews tell readers to try it without saying how their own was. The remaining 25 name it on a list of what the market sells or what they ate.

Everything from blood sausage to live octopus. — TripAdvisor review of Gwangjang Market, 4 stars, July 2024

The trade-off: twelve verdicts are a small number, and we give them as counts. What they show is a split, and a split is worth knowing before ordering a full plate.

What the Reviewers Who Liked It Say

Five reviewers liked the sundae. The clearest is a visitor who expected not to.

I was skeptical about the sundae and it was tastier than I expected. — Google Maps review of Gwangjang Market, 5 stars, May 2025

The mung bean pancake and sundae (blood sausage) were definitely the best items to get. — Google Maps review of Gwangjang Market, 5 stars, May 2025

Another puts it on the list of everything they tried and enjoyed.

I lived everything I tried, like pancake with pork, dumplings, muscles, sundae, gimbab. — Google Maps review of Gwangjang Market, 5 stars, December 2025

A Korean reviewer calls the mayak gimbap and the sundae delicious. A French reviewer describes soondae as a kind of boudin and says it is quite good. A reviewer writing in Chinese had it as a soup and praises the broth as rich, with a generous amount in the bowl.

A reviewer writing in Spanish gives a point of reference without quite giving a verdict: the taste is close to the morcilla of Burgos, only milder.

The trade-off: the reviewers who liked it say little about why. The most useful note is the comparison with European blood sausage, which tells a reader who already eats boudin or morcilla roughly what to expect.

What the Reviewers Who Did Not Like It Say

Six reviewers did not like it or could not eat it.

The tteokbokki and sundae was a hard pass for me after my first bite. — Google Maps review of Gwangjang Market, 1 star, October 2025

A German reviewer in July 2026 found it dry and bland, and adds a caveat: having never eaten sundae before, they could not tell whether theirs was a good one or a mediocre one. A Japanese reviewer wanted to try it, thought it looked off-putting, ordered a small set, and reports that neither person at the table could eat it.

Two Korean reviewers are short about it. One, in a review about high prices, tells readers not to eat the tteokbokki or the sundae. The other says that apart from the pancakes and the yukhoe nothing tasted like much, the sundae included.

A reviewer writing in Chinese, who compares it with Taiwanese rice sausage, says the sundae they were served was not in pig intestine and the casing had a strange texture. They did not finish it. Their explanation is that better stalls use real intestine and cheaper ones an artificial casing. That is one reviewer’s claim; we did not verify how any stall makes its sundae.

Two of these six still gave the market four stars. A seventh reviewer calls the sundae ordinary, along with the gimbap, the tteokbokki and the hotteok.

The trade-off: one of the six says they had never eaten sundae before, and another had been wanting to try it. Their reviews describe a first meeting with the dish as much as they describe Gwangjang Market.

It Comes With Tteokbokki: What Reviewers Paid

Seven of the 43 reviews order or name sundae together with tteokbokki. A reviewer writing in Chinese lists tteokbokki with sundae as a classic pairing. A Japanese reviewer uses the market on every trip to Korea for a breakfast of sundae, tteokbokki or gimbap, sometimes changing stalls to compare.

💵 When	What the reviewer reports
June 2025	A set of gimbap, tteokbokki and sundae: 10,000 won
October 2025	Four dishes at one stall, sundae among them: 25,000 won
October 2025	Six slices of sundae: about 150 Taiwan dollars, by the reviewer’s own conversion
A visit in December 2017	Sundae at 4,000 won on the first menu the stall showed

The set at 10,000 won comes from the Japanese reviewer who could not eat the sundae; the same review calls the price very cheap for the amount. The figure in Taiwan dollars is from a one-star review that calls the market’s prices high.

One Korean review describes a billing dispute at a stall where the reviewer ate tteokbokki, fish cake, sundae and gimbap, on a visit in December 2017. The reviewer expected 13,000 won and was charged 15,000, and concluded afterwards that the stall had shown one menu, with sundae at 4,000 won, and charged from another.

The trade-off: these are four figures from 2017 to 2025, and no reviewer names the stall. They show the range reviewers met. They are not today’s prices, which we did not verify.

If You Have Never Eaten Blood Sausage

Three reviewers describe hesitating. One was skeptical and liked it. One thought it looked off-putting and could not eat it. The third explains what it is and then orders something else.

soondae (pig intestines stuffed with cellophane noodles, barley and pork blood) — TripAdvisor review of Gwangjang Market, 5 stars, December 2024

We just stuck to the mandu, kimbap, and hotteok!! — TripAdvisor review of Gwangjang Market, 5 stars, December 2024

The Japanese reviewer’s reasoning is the practical one: a set with gimbap and tteokbokki keeps the sundae portion small, so little is wasted if it does not suit. One reviewer tried it on a street food tour, alongside tteokbokki, pig snout and gimbap.

Some who rated the market low still recommend it. A two-star review that complains about the crowd ends with this:

Try blood sausages and pig foot. — TripAdvisor review of Gwangjang Market, 2 stars, May 2019

Sundae hardly appears in our samples of the other two markets. No review of Namdaemun Market names it. Two reviews of Mangwon Market do, and one of those says the sundae and offal were hard to accept.

The trade-off: a small portion costs little and settles the question. The reviews give no way to predict which side of the split a first-timer will land on.

Which Stall? Reviews Do Not Say

No review in our sample recommends a stall for sundae by name. What reviewers do say is that the stalls resemble each other.

most of the stalls were selling the same thing so any of them were fine — Google Maps review of Gwangjang Market, 5 stars, May 2025

Two reviewers writing in Chinese make the same observation as a complaint: dumplings, sundae, trotters and pancakes at almost every stall, one of them says, and the other counts sundae, rice cakes and pancakes every two or three steps.

Sundae is named about as often in low reviews as in high ones: in 3.3% (8) of the one-to-three-star reviews and 2.9% (35) of the four-and-five-star ones.

The trade-off: with no stall to point to, the only guide in the reviews is the one reviewer’s remark about casings, and that is unverified.

Methodology

Figures come from the SeoulFoodTour research corpus. This article uses a sample of 1,458 rated reviews of Gwangjang Market from Google Maps and TripAdvisor, collected without filtering by rating, plus the samples of Namdaemun Market (1,376) and Mangwon Market (1,089) for the one comparison above.

What was counted. A search for sundae, blood sausage and related words, in every language in the sample, matched 46 reviews of Gwangjang Market. Each was read. Three name trotters or intestine and not sundae, which leaves 43. A second, wider search found no others.

Verdicts. A verdict is a statement about the sundae itself. “Everything was delicious” counts when sundae is on the reviewer’s list of what they ate. A review that only says the market sells it does not.

Counts are floors. The percentages are shares of the sample of 1,458. Everything else is a count of a few reviews, and is given as a count.

Quotations. Every quotation is from a review written in English and is reproduced exactly as it appears in the original record, spelling included. Reviews in other languages are counted and described in our words, never quoted.

What this article does not do. It does not verify today’s prices, and it does not test how any stall makes its sundae. A review records what one visitor was served on one day.

About the Author

Intercoper Curator Team

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Is the sundae at Gwangjang Market good?+

Reviews are split. Of 43 reviews of Gwangjang Market that name sundae, 12 say how it tasted. Five liked it, one called it ordinary, and six did not like it or could not eat it. Mandu at the same market gets 31 good verdicts out of 39, so sundae is a less safe order.

What is sundae?+

Korean blood sausage. One reviewer of Gwangjang Market describes it as pig intestines stuffed with cellophane noodles, barley and pork blood. A French reviewer compares it to boudin, and a reviewer writing in Spanish says it tastes like the morcilla of Burgos, only milder.

How much does sundae cost at Gwangjang Market?+

Reviews give a few figures. A set of gimbap, tteokbokki and sundae cost one reviewer 10,000 won in June 2025. Another paid 25,000 won for four dishes in October 2025. A reviewer visiting in 2017 saw sundae at 4,000 won on the menu. We did not verify today’s prices.

Is sundae served with tteokbokki?+

Seven of the 43 reviews order or name the two together, and one calls tteokbokki with sundae a classic pairing. A Japanese reviewer bought them as a set with gimbap. One reviewer had sundae as a soup instead and praised it.

Should I try sundae if I have never had blood sausage?+

Of the six reviewers who disliked it, one says they had never eaten sundae before and another had been wanting to try it. One who was skeptical found it tastier than expected. A Japanese reviewer chose a small set to keep the portion low, and neither person at the table could eat the sundae. Ordering a small amount first is the approach they describe.

Which stall has the best sundae at Gwangjang Market?+

No review in our sample recommends a stall for sundae by name. One reviewer who liked it says most stalls sell the same thing and any of them is fine. One who did not says quality depends on the casing a stall uses, which we did not verify.