'Tteok pilgrimage' trend sends interest in Korean rice cakes soaring 5,000%

Pizza-topped rice cakes, pumpkin injeolmi and fruit mochi lead a fusion tteok boom as younger consumers embrace traditional flavors

Instagram posts featuring pizza-topped rice cakes from Mashitteok, a rice cake shop in Yongin, have racked up more than 240,000 and 130,000 views respectively. [Mashitteok Instagram]

A new trend is sweeping younger Korean consumers: traveling across the country to visit celebrated rice cake shops, a phenomenon now known as "tteok pilgrimage."

The term blends the Korean word for rice cake ("tteok") with the word for a religious pilgrimage ("seongjisunrye"), and refers to the practice of hunting down the best traditional and fusion tteok spots — from the viral pizza-topped rice cake to fruit and cream-filled glutinous rice cakes, pumpkin and castella injeolmi, and red-bean-paste rice cakes.

The craze has spawned its own vocabulary. "Tteoketing" — a mashup of "tteok" and "ticketing" — describes the scramble to buy from popular shops the moment they open online sales, only to find them sold out instantly. "Yakgwating" applies the same concept to yakgwa, a traditional honey cookie. "Tteok open run" refers to lining up outside a shop before it opens.

As of Friday, Google Trends data showed interest in "tteok pilgrimage" had surged more than 5,000 percent compared with a year earlier. Interest in pizza-topped rice cakes jumped more than 1,800 percent from the previous month and more than 5,000 percent year on year.

Social media interest has been equally intense. Posts tagged with "tteok restaurant" on Instagram number 136,000. More than 5,000 posts map out must-visit tteok shops around the country, and crowd-sourced maps of top tteok pilgrimage destinations are circulating widely in online communities.

Changeok Tteok in Gwangju, South Jeolla Province, has drawn daily open-run crowds with its pumpkin injeolmi. [Changeok Tteok Instagram]

The boom traces back to the "halmaenieol" trend — a portmanteau of "grandmother" and "millennial" — in which younger consumers developed a taste for traditional snacks like yakgwa and injeolmi once associated with older generations. The arrival of visually striking fusion rice cakes has amplified the movement, aligning it with a social-media culture that prizes aesthetics and novel experiences.

Sales figures bear out the enthusiasm. According to online grocery platform Kurly, transactions in the tteok and hangwa category more than doubled year on year in the three months from June through August, while the number of products on offer grew 80 percent. Sales of hangwa items alone — including yakgwa and yaksik — rose 123 percent over the same period.

The biggest sales jump among individual products went to Changeok's pumpkin injeolmi, whose transactions surged more than fourfold — up 336 percent — compared with the same period last year. Pizza-topped rice cakes also broke into the top sellers within two weeks of being listed on the platform in mid-August.

Department stores have moved quickly to capitalize on the trend, recruiting popular tteok shops for pop-up events to draw younger shoppers.

Lotte Department Store's Dongtan branch ran a pop-up for Mashitteok — a Yongin shop that built its reputation through word of mouth for its pizza-topped rice cakes — from Aug. 28 to Sept. 3. The Busan flagship store is hosting a pop-up for Yeongdobariddeokbang, widely credited as the originator of the pizza rice cake, through Sunday.

Yongsan iPark Mall is currently running pop-ups for Gangwon Tteokjip x Ttegureureu Bakery's pizza rice cakes, injeolmi specialist Morakjeolmi, and Jjuakjjuak, a shop that reinterprets the traditional Gaeseong juak fritter in a modern style. News of the events has spread rapidly on social media, triggering daily open runs and sellouts.

spa@heraldcorp.com