✨ You’re reading the DNK April 2025 issue
💬 Contact: [email protected] 

Annyeong Digital Nomads Korea community

Do you live somewhere because you love the place… or because you love its food?
(We know our answer to that 🍜🤤)

Korean restaurants are delicious.

But one thing they’ve never been is flexible. This used to make having a specific diet, especially being vegetarian or vegan, damn near impossible.

We have great news: there are now many options all over the country, especially in Seoul! 

We wrote a super complete guide with our members’ help 🙏

• Where to live and how to cut costs on fruits and vegetables

• Maps of vegetarian and vegan restaurants all over the country (courtesy of our AMAZING community members)

• Vegetarian & vegan digital nomads’s practical tips 

• A vocab cheat sheet to communicate in restaurants

Thank you for being the most awesome community 🫰

🎋 5 Simple Tips 

1. Choose your neighborhood well

Most vegetarian and vegan restaurants can be found in two neighborhoods.  

• Hongdae

• Itaewon

We recommend staying in one of those two areas, or their surroundings. 

For Hongdae, you can live as far as Yeonnam-dong (at Hoppin House, our coliving space 💚), Sinchon, Sangsu, Hapjeong, and Seogyo-dong. 

For Itaewon, this includes Gyeongnidan, Haebangcheon (also shortened HBC), and Hangangjin. 

You can even live close to Mangwon, which has the double advantage of being close to the local market - one of the rare ones that still offers very affordable prices for vegetables and fruits. 

2. Your Kitchen Matters

Eating at vegetarian restaurants all the time will be hard - especially on your bank account. Our advice is to rent a room with a functional kitchen and a reasonably sized fridge with a freezer. 

Why the freezer, you might ask? Korean cuisine is very group-oriented and traditionally, the mother cooks for the whole family. 

This means fruits and vegetables are sold the cheapest (by a very high margin) when they’re in bulk. 

A very good option to save money is to cut them all and then freeze them if you’re afraid you’ll be unable to finish them all before they turn bad. 

Another option is to buy frozen vegetables and fruits on Coupang (Amazon-like website in Korea). You can also order fresh ones, but it’s harder to be sure the quality will match your expectations. Since last year, it's possible to order on the platform with a foreign credit card! 

3. Google Maps and Happy Cow are your friends 

This is the only time we’ll recommend you to do this: check Google Maps for vegetarian and vegan restaurants. This is where you’ll get the most extensive and reliable comments to help you choose a place. 

Once you decide where you want to go, copy and paste the address into a navigation app that works in Korea, like Naver Map or Kakao Maps! 

We also recommend Happy Cow and, in general, online groups - Digital Nomads Korea community, Reddit, Facebook groups, etc. 

4. Temple food is nirvana

If you want to eat vegan anywhere in Korea… We recommend Buddhism! 🙏

There are many temples all over the peninsula. If it’s lunchtime, you can often drop by their canteen and get a fully vegan meal made out of whatever was available on the day. A nationwide Templestay program also lets you stay the night or a few days in a temple of your choice. 

If you’re very curious about temple food, visit Baegyangsa temple or Gameunsa temple. Their nuns are among the most renowned chefs in Korea. Michelin-starred chefs from around the world have visited them for their innovative ideas and their shared fondness for eggplants. 

5. Kimchi is NOT vegan

Because it is spicy fermented cabbage and a super healthy food, people think kimchi is animal product-free. Vegan preparation is increasing, but still, most are NOT. 

Korean cuisine uses a lot of fish-based products to give flavor to meals. There’s the well-known fish sauce in most soups and sauces. There’s also the lesser-known fermented shrimp - used as salt. Most often, this is what will make Kimchi non-vegetarian. 

🍀 4 Advanced Tips

Inês (vegetarian, eats dairy)

To be honest I thought it was going to be a lot worse. In convenience stores, tofu is my favorite. At Homeplus, close to Hoppin House, they always had a 2-for-1 promo going on so it was quite cheap. 

My go-to meal at home was either rice or noodles with sautéed tofu with Pak Choi and mushrooms… in the soy and peanut butter sauce, another coliver taught me once!

I think what I missed the most was fruit. I’m very used to just eating fruit two or three times a day, and in Seoul, I ended up not eating it that much.

Erika (vegetarian, eats dairy and eggs)

I did find it challenging to be vegetarian in smaller towns, even though I eat eggs. Convenience stores have different offers, even in the same chain, so my advice would be to not give up. Sometimes you enter your third CU and happen to suddenly find amazing vegetarian options! 

In Seoul, it became easier the longer I lived in a given neighborhood. I had time to explore and discover some hidden places. In Hongdae, there was even one advertising ‘vegetarians welcome’. It was so refreshing not to have to explain. 

Lorenzo (vegan)

I lived for a few months in Songdo when I arrived in Korea. Not going to lie, it wasn't fun (laughs). I struggled a lot with finding vegan options. 

When I moved to Seoul, it felt like paradise in comparison. There are vegan restaurants, both Korean and international. It requires searching, but that’s usually part of the vegan lifestyle anyway.

I found an Instagram Korean vegan community and a vegan festival. You have temple food and some options in traditional markets. There are also options in international restaurants sometimes.

Yeonu (vegan)

It’s completely possible to be vegan in Korea but it’s easier if you speak Korean (laughs). My advice would be to check the allergy box on the package when you buy food at the supermarket. If it says ‘soy, wheat’, it can be eaten. 

I mostly use Coupang for vegan grocery shopping and getting my multivitamins. The vegan cafe Nono Shop in Itaewon sells supplements and other vegan groceries. Charlie’s Grocery in HBC sells vegan cheese and plant-based products.  

If there aren’t any vegan restaurants around where you live, there are certain menus you can easily make vegan, but you’ll need to speak some Korean. For example: kimbab, bibimbap, jjolmyeon… 

• For kimbab, ask the restaurant to take out eggs, ham, and fishcake (crab stick). 

• For bibimbab, remove eggs and beef (they sometimes put beef in gochujang, in that case, they can’t make it vegan). 

• Jjolmyeon is a noodle soup that’s usually vegan-friendly, just ask them to make it without egg. 

• In summer, I recommend kong-guksu. It’s a cold bean noodle soup, just ask them to take out eggs. 

• For winter, I go with deulkkae kalguksu, a warm perilla seed noodle soup. Ask if they use fish sauce, just in case, but they usually don’t.

🤫 2 Exclusive Maps

Two of our members agreed to share these goldmines:

• Sylwia’s Google map of 40+ vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Seoul 

• Lorenzo’s Naver map of vegan restaurants in Korea 

🇰🇷 1 Vocab Cheat Sheet

• 채소랑 계란만 먹을 수 있어요. (tchae-so-lang kye-ran-man meo-geul soo i-sseo-yo): I can only eat eggs and vegetables.

•  ⁠고기하고 생선, 해산물 못 먹어요. (ko-gi-ha-go saeng-seon hae-san-mol mon meo-geo-yo): I can’t eat meat, fish, or seafood.

• 해산물 (hae-san-mul): seafood

• 생선 (saen-gseon): fish

• 고기 (ko-gi): meat

• ⁠고기하고 생선, 해산물은 빼고 주세요. (ko-gi-ha-go saeng-seon, hae-san-mo-leun pae-go ju-sse-yo): Can you remove meat, fish, seafood?

  빼고 (pae-go) generally means ‘remove’. You can say it after the thing you want to remove - for example, 설탕 (seol-tang) for sugar. It’s the keyword if you want to ask for this and can’t remember the rest!

• ⁠채식주의자 (tchae-sik-djoo-e-(d)ja): vegetarian

  However, it’s not always clear in Korea what you mean when you say vegetarian. Do you only eat vegetables? Or also eggs? Fish? Butter? Etc. I won’t always be enough, but it’s a word that can help clarify things upfront. The Korean language is highly contextual, which means it’s better to give too many details.

• ⁠혹시 (eok ssheeeeeee): By any chance…

  This is our secret tip! Start your sentence with this. It will help the person in front of you to prepare mentally for the fact that you’re going to ask a question that might require a conversation outside their usual service framework. It’s a small detail, but it works wonders to make the whole interaction easier.

See you in two weeks!

🫰