Here’s the juicy story behind the tasty South Korean fruits I grew up eating!
It’s embarrassing that I’m too scared to peel an apple with a knife (I just bite into them now), and I can trace back this privileged ignorance to my mom, to whom I am grateful for topping our dinners off with fresh seasonal fruits.
From that experience, I confirmed firsthand that there is more space for dessert. It’s a big part of Korean culture to end a meal with delicious fruits, as part of ip-ga-shim (입가심), to wash away the striking but sometimes stinky flavors of Korean cuisine.
Many Korean households have pre-chopped fruit sitting in their fridge, like my grandma, who would slice way too many cham-weh (참외, oriental melon) at once, then store the extra in a crystal bowl covered in plastic wrap, to retain the high water content of this delicious South Korean fruit.
In this guide, we’re going to go over the most popular fruits that South Koreans love and devour every day.
Top South Korean Fruits
1. Asian Pears (배, Beh)
After running wild at the playground on a sweltering, hot summer day in Korea, nothing could cool me down more than Haitai’s Tank Boy asian pear slushie. Once I got old enough, I realized that the wheaty afterscent of these Korean pears kinda taste like beer.
There’s plenty of culinary uses for Asian Pears, since they have high sugar content.
My mom grinds Asian Pears to add a sweet flavor to Korean Barbecue, the healthy way.
Fun Fact: Asian Pears are officially a national fruit of South Korea, along with apples and persimmons!
2. Oriental Melon (참외, Cham-weh)
Why are there so many seeds in Korean melon? 🧐 I’d ponder as my mom would patiently carve the distinctly bright yellow skin off the fruit and shave the long strands of seeds away. Inevitably, a few seeds would remain on the melon pieces, and I’d wonder if they’d grow into more melons in my tummy.
Boy, did I hope they would, ’cause this stuff is goood!
Korean yellow musk melons taste like honeydew melons, but crunchier. They are a little less sweet, but more refreshing. The slightly muted sweetness keeps you coming back for more, until you realize you’ve eaten one whole oriental melon, after the big, salty, spicy Korean dinner you just guzzled down.
3. Persimmon (감, Gam)
My mom would trick me by freezing Korean sweet persimmon, and offering it to me like it was candy. Well, it was very much dessert-worthy with a honey-like flavor, but it was also a great way to get me to eat fruit (and got me asking for seconds!).
Each bite into a frozen persimmon leaves their stunningly orange-red fibers sticking out like haywire.
You’ll want to remove the skin before you eat frozen persimmon. Personally, I’d just dig the fleshy bits out and leave the skin on my plate.
Apparently, all the fiber in persimmon is good for pooping (we, Koreans, are obsessed with and very direct about foods and practices that help with that very important undertaking in life). Personally, though, I’ve never seen noticeable results 💩
One traditional Korean dessert is half-dried persimmon (곶감, got-gam). If you like the chewy, fleshy texture of dried mango, half-dried persimmon has that similar texture, except that it’s gonna be hunkier in your mouth.
Not gonna lie, half-dried persimmon isn’t my favorite cup of tea. I find that it has this weird too-sweetness to it (even though sugar typically isn’t added to it), but if you’re a fan of dried prunes, you’ll probably like this stuff, too!
4. Mangosteen
Girlllll, I know mangosteen isn’t Korean (it’s from Southeast Asia). But can I say that the mangosteen craze that happened when I was young was definitely a thing?
It was wild, everyone would buy these big, heavy, resealable packets of frozen mangosteen from grocery stores. Koreans are all about the trends, and this was the trend for the longest time. In the span of a few months, I easily ate dozens upon dozens of these small, round fruits.
These little milky fruits are protected in a hard-ish purple skin, but if you buy them frozen, they are likely going to be peeled already.
Mangosteen kinda doesn’t taste like much. They’ve got a subtle, almost vanilla-y flavor, and it’s slick and kinda jelly-like inside. They have a pretty big seed in the center, which you’ll need to spit out (I’ve tried eating it, it’s very bitter haha).
They make a great dessert, especially after all the intense flavors of Korean food!
5. Asian Plum (매실, Maesil)
Korean green plums have been used in traditional medicine for their health benefits, especially for detoxing and alleviating digestive issues. Maybe that’s why I don’t really vibe with maesil – because I’d drink it when I wasn’t feeling too hot.
All in all, it has a unique scent that’s refreshing and almost minty. Asian plum is also used to make alcohol, called maesil-ju (매실주).
6. Sesame Seeds (참깨, Cham-kkay)
Not gonna lie, I didn’t know sesame seeds were fruit until I wrote this article.
But I’m glad they are, because they’re one of the primary Korean seasonings.
My mom would tell me, “Rhaime, Korean food is so simple. You only need a few ingredients.” And while I still disagree to some degree – there are just so many Korean dishes and ways of preparing food from the millennia of Korea’s history – I totally agree, in hindsight, that there aren’t that many seasonings. And sesame seeds are one of them!
Sesame seed oil adds that umami deepness to so many Korean dishes. Plus, Koreans garnish rice and meat dishes with roasted sesame seeds, both to add flavor and to make the dishes look good, too.
Most of the time, it’s the light-brown colored sesame seeds, but sometimes it’s the black sesame seeds, too.
Pro Tip: I think this is definitely more part of Japanese cuisine, but grinding the toasted sesame seeds really unlock their highly satisfying, distinctly nutty flavor!
7. Hallabong Oranges (한라봉)
About 60% of Korean words can be written in hanja, or in Chinese characters. What I loved about learning hanja is that several of the characters looked like what they meant, like the word san, which looks like a mountain.
The reason why hallabong got its name is because the top of these oranges are raised, and people compared it to Hallasan, the main volcano on Jeju Island.
From the Chinese character san, to the Hallabong orange, and the volacano Hallasan – they all look like peaks!
Hallabong aren’t your picture perfect, spherical oranges. They have bumpy and uneven rinds that are thicc af and kinda hard to peel.
Once you rip ’em open, though, they are very sweet and juicy inside. Oh so sweet, that hallabong oranges make pretty popular gifts for Korean holidays like Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) and Seol-lal (Korean Lunar New Year).
8. Jeju Mandarin Oranges (제주 감귤)
“Should we eat some uglies?” Mom would say.
Koreans lovingly call Jeju mandarin oranges “mot-na-nee,” which is a sort-of endearing term for someone who is a cross between dumb and ugly (Koreans are savage). Well, I grew up mainly relating mot-na-nee to Jeju mandarins, but that term is actually used to describe other fruit and veg that are organic and imperfect.
These “ugly” mandarins are typically a mix of green and yellow. There was actually a whole campaign by farmers to stop setting standards that rejected the sale of oranges that weren’t yellow enough. Don’t judge these amazing Jeju oranges by their color 😤
These mandarin oranges get their green from being in the sun so much, and are especially tangy and sugary.
9. Honey Apples
There’s a variety of Korean apples that are so sweet that they’re called “Honey Apples” at the grocery store. These are red apples from Cheongsong County, in Gyeongsang Province.
They’re the Korean equivalent of Honeycrisp apples – crazy sweet, crazy juicy and just overall a good time.
10. Korean Strawberries
The sweetest, most massive strawberries I’ve had are Korean Strawberries. Well, maybe I’ve seen more massive strawberries in the US, but usually I’ve found that those don’t have as much flavor as the smaller ones.
Korean strawberries, however, don’t seem to have this problem. Korean fresh whole strawberries are such a beautiful, pinkish-red hue and are so sweet, that it’ll make you wonder if someone sprinkled sugar on them while you weren’t looking.
11. Korean Peaches
A fresh, locally-grown peach can’t be beat. Biting into the soft, ripened flesh of a seriously fuzzy Korean White Peach (bek-do peach, 백도 복숭아) is honestly better than eating most ice creams.
Then, there’s the Chundo Peach (천도 복숭아), which has a smooth exterior without fuzz, with a snappier texture and a good amount of tang.
Or, just bite directly into the yellow Hwang-Do Peach (황도 복숭아), which has a firmer texture.
Korean peaches have a ton of vitamin C and vitamin A to keep ya healthy.
12. Shine Muscat Grapes
Shiny muscat grapes are built different. They’re nothing like the green grapes you’ll find in the US! These grapes are a delicacy at the grocery store – almost 3x the price of green grapes in the US – for a reason.
First of all, the individual grapes are HUGE and spherical, and have an electrifying sugariness and firm freshness that is unparalleled.
These grapes originate from Japan and are also grown in Korea!
13. Korean Blackberry (복분자, Bok-boon-ja)
It’s commonplace to buy blackberries at US grocery stores. But I remember Korean blackberry mostly for its uses in creating Korean wine, which originates from the 1960s in the mountainous area near Seonunsan.
As much as I love berries, I’m not the biggest fan of Korean blackberry wine. It’s got a sort of vinegary tang that throws me off. It’s typically created by fermenting blackberries with added alcohol for 3-6 months.
14. Magnolia Berry (오미자, Oh-mee-ja)
Magnolia berries are strikingly red berries and are commonly steeped as a traditional Korean tea called omija tea (오미자차) for its therapeutic effects. The name omija comes from the fact that these berries have five different flavor profiles: sweet, sour, bitter, salty and spicy.
If you wanna strengthen your heart, lower your blood pressure and strengthen your immune system according to traditional practices, boil some dried mangolia berries (Schisandra berries) on low heat, and add honey to taste!
15. Round Kumquat (금귤, Geum-gyool)
Koreans may not recognize the formal name of Round Kumquat, which is pronounced geum-gyool (금귤), since we colloquially call it a much more playful name: kking-kkang (낑깡)!
Boil the kumquat with sugar and syrup and leave it out for 3-4 days in room temperature to create delightfully orange and blissfully tangy Perserved Kumquats.
Best South Korean Fruits (Conclusion)
In this article, we went over the 15 best South Korean fruits.
These typical fruits in Korean society range across various flavors, each with unique tastes that can be hard to find abroad. There’s the tangy punch of maesil (Asian plum), the soothing sweetness of chamwae (Oriental pear) and the fibery goodness of persimmon, which are some of the most important fruits among South Koreans.
Here are the 15 best South Korean fruits we went over:
- Asian Pears (배, Beh)
- Oriental Melon (참외, Cham-weh)
- Persimmon (감, Gam)
- Mangosteen
- Asian Plum (매실, Maesil)
- Sesame Seeds (참깨, Cham-kkay)
- Hallabong Oranges (한라봉)
- Jeju Mandarin Oranges (제주 감귤)
- Honey Apples
- Korean Strawberries
- Korean Peaches
- Shine Muscat Grapes
- Korean Blackberry (복분자, Bok-boon-ja)
- Magnolia Berry (오미자, Oh-mee-ja)
- Round Kumquat (금귤, Geum-gyool)
Thanks for checking out my guide to the best South Korean fruits!
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