Ask a Korean which chicken brand is number one and you will not get one answer. You will get a question back: which kind?
There are over 700 chicken brands in Korea and more than 31,000 chicken shops — the count passed 30,000 for the first time in 2024. In a country with that many, “best chicken” stopped being a single contest a long time ago.
So the honest answer is that Korea has four number ones, not one. Here they are, with the runners-up.
A note on method: there is no official nationwide vote for any of these categories. What follows is our own ranking, built from how often brands come up in Korean community discussion, a Korean Consumer Agency satisfaction survey, published sales figures, and our own eating. Treat it as an informed starting point, not a scoreboard.
1. FRIED — plain, no sauce
The baseline. No sauce, no powder — just batter and oil, which means there is nowhere to hide.
| # | Brand / menu | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | BBQ Golden Olive | Fried in olive oil, which became the whole brand identity. This is the reference point Koreans compare other fried chicken against. |
| 2 | bhc Hot Fried | Comes up repeatedly as better than the plain version. |
| 3 | Nolboo / Norang Tongdak | The value pick — noticeably more chicken for the price. |
| 4 | Mom’s Touch Big Sai Boneless Max | All thigh meat, large portion, and brined well enough that there is no off smell. |
| 5 | Donkey Chicken | The cult pick. Not everyone knows it; people who do, insist on it. |
First place is close to uncontested. Everything below it is argued about.
2. SWEET — yangnyeom (양념)
⚠️ Yangnyeom is not “spicy chicken.” It is sweet, sticky and mildly hot — gochujang and syrup, not vinegar. If you are expecting buffalo wings, recalibrate.
| # | Brand / menu | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cheogajip (처갓집) | The most-named brand in Korean discussion, and the biggest first-generation chain by revenue. |
| 1 | Pelicana (페리카나) | Took first place in a Korean Consumer Agency satisfaction survey of major chains. “For yangnyeom, it has to be Pelicana” is a recurring line. |
| 3 | BBQ Yangnyeom | Not the connoisseur pick, but it is everywhere, which makes it the default. |
| 4 | Mexicana | Another first-generation chain. ⚠️Easy to confuse with Pelicana — check the sign. |
| 5 | Nene Yangnyeom | Mentioned, rarely championed. |
We are listing two brands at number one because there is no basis for separating them. ⚠️One practical note: Pelicana has far fewer branches, so it may simply not deliver to you.
3. SOY — ganjang (간장)
Soy-garlic. Salty, slightly sweet, not hot. If you cannot eat chilli, this is your category.
| # | Brand / menu | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kyochon Original / Honey | Kyochon effectively created soy-garlic chicken as a category in Korea. |
| 2 | bhc Matchoking | “If it is soy, obviously Matchoking” is a standard line in Korean forums. |
| 3 | Puradak Black Allio | Soy sauce with fried garlic chips. The brand signature. ⚠️Genuinely divisive — reviews split hard. |
| 4 | Goobne Galbi Cheonwang | Oven-baked rather than fried, which some prefer and some do not. |
| 5 | Arachi Aeganjang | Fried in brown rice oil, which gives it a nuttier, more distinctly Korean finish. ⚠️Our own pick — we could not find published data on it. |
The Korean Consumer Agency once compared ten brands’ soy-garlic products side by side — Kyochon, Goobne, Nene, Norang Tongdak, BBQ, bhc and Puradak among them. They published the comparison but never ranked them.
4. POWDER — seasoned dry
Fried chicken dusted with seasoning powder instead of sauce. ⭐This is the most recent category and the most Korean.
| # | Brand / menu | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | bhc Bburinkle | Korea’s single best-selling chicken menu item. Also the top seller at baseball stadiums — and the number one seller in all seven countries bhc has expanded into. |
| 2 | bhc Curringkle | Curry seasoning. Sold over 150,000 birds in its first week. |
| 3 | BBQ Cheesling | Cheese powder. |
| 4 | Nene Snowing | One of the earlier powder lines. |
| 5 | Goobne Gochu Basak | ⚠️Closer to a sauce than a true powder. |
If you only try one thing from this article, make it Bburinkle. It is the only item here that has won in every country it was sold in, which suggests it is not an acquired taste.
A word on price
Korean chicken is not cheap, and the price is not one number.
| Head office list price | what the brand publishes |
|---|---|
| Shop price | franchisees may set their own |
| Delivery app price | often higher than both |
Prices rose across the board recently. Kyochon franchisees in Seoul raised delivery-app prices while leaving in-store and own-app prices alone; bhc moved to franchisee-set pricing, so it now varies shop to shop; some Cheogajip, Pelicana and Nene branches added their own increases.
Practical advice: budget somewhere around ₩20,000 for a whole chicken, and check both the delivery app and the shop’s own app — they are frequently different.
So who is number one?
Wrong question. In Korea it is four questions, and most people answer all four without thinking: BBQ for plain, Cheogajip or Pelicana for sweet, Kyochon for soy, bhc for powder.
Deviate from those four and Koreans have a word for it — gaechwi (개취), short for “personal taste.” It is not an insult. It just means you have left the default.
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