Sep 24, 2026
A few days before the Chuseok holiday, a long line of customers stretched past three neighboring stores outside Pungnyeon Tteok, a rice cake shop in Incheon’s Bupyeong Traditional Market earlier this week. They were not waiting for “songpyeon,” the traditional rice cake associated with Chuseok, but for “pizza seolgi,” a fusion rice cake topped with tomato sauce, cheese and pepperoni slices on a base of steamed white rice cake. Despite a limit of four pieces per customer, the line showed no sign of letting up. Pungnyeon Tteok owner Hwang Seong-un, 50, said he has been selling pizza seolgi for about two months, with an average of around 1,000 people visiting daily. He said the rice cakes typically sell out between 5:30 and 6 p.m. That day, ingredients ran out at around 5:40 p.m., prompting the shop to put up a notice saying it had closed for the day. Traditional-market rice cake shops are bustling ahead of Chuseok, thanks in part to the popularity of unusual rice cake varieties such as pizza seolgi on social media, particularly among people in their 20s and 30s. New slang terms h