One Bite of Seed Hotteok, and Busan's Night Sea Breeze Slips In — Bupyeong Kkangtong Market's Night Market
Walk a few alleys past Jagalchi Station and, from around 7 p.m., the market lane that spent the day folding up its stalls puts on a different face. Small covered food carts light up one after another, and between them the sound of oil hissing and the smell of caramelizing sugar settle over the whole alley.
At a glance: Location Bupyeong Kkangtong Market area, Bupyeong-dong, Jung-gu, Busan (walkable from Jagalchi or Nampo stations, Busan Metro Line 1) · Night market hours roughly 7 p.m. to around midnight daily (subject to change in rain).
There's no wasted motion in the vendor's hands as she pinches off a palm-sized ball of dough, sets it on the griddle, and flattens it with a round press. It's a familiar hotteok pancake up through the moment the brown-sugar filling goes in — but at Bupyeong Kkangtong Market, the last step is a generous handful of sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and peanuts pressed in on top. As the sizzle on the griddle grows louder, the sweet smell thickens too, and the first bite through the paper cup cracks the crisp shell before molten brown-sugar syrup spills out, hot enough to catch your breath. Right behind it comes the crunch of the seeds, and sweet, scorching-hot and nutty all arrive in your mouth at once.
The name "Kkangtong (Tin Can) Market" comes from refugees during the 1950-53 Korean War who gathered here to sell canned goods that had come out of U.S. military bases, according to the Korea Tourism Organization and Busan Tourism Organization. It's also known as the country's first market to run a permanent night market, which is how it earned its reputation as a place that only shows its true face after dark. Seed-topped hotteok is consistently the first snack that comes up when people talk about this night market.
With the gap between daytime and nighttime temperatures widening these days, the sea breeze off the water makes the warmth radiating from the hotteok in your hand all the more welcome. Taking careful, small bites so the molten syrup doesn't scald the roof of your mouth, you find Busan's night has somehow drawn a little closer.