Yongsan Station Korean restaurant: half-plate cold pork, Baekok

Baekok Yongsan at a glance

A stylish Korean restaurant behind HYBE. Great for bringing a foreign friend or for a date.

Where is Baekok Yongsan?

Baekok Yongsan (백옥 용산) is a Korean restaurant on the 1st floor of 11-76 Hangang-daero 10-gil, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, behind the HYBE building. It is open daily 11:00-22:00 with no break time, and you can use the free parking at Yongsan Tax Office.

Inside and outside Baekok Yongsan

A stylish Korean place near Yongsan Station, behind HYBE: Baekok's exterior and interior. Today's stop is Baekok in Yongsan, tucked behind the HYBE building. It's a bit of a distance from Yongsan Tax Office, but you can park there for free and walk over, and it takes less than 10 minutes on foot from Yongsan Station.

I always just walked past HYBE by the front entrance, so I never knew,

but coming around the back, there's plenty to see.

There were lots of foreign visitors who looked like fans of HYBE artists, and there seem to be photo spots all around the building. As an ahjussi (middle-aged guy) who doesn't really know today's singers, all I could think was, wow, they must be popular.

Gukbap (soup with rice) is popular all over the world these days, especially in the US. Where old-school gukbap places feel like rustic veterans, newer ones try to impress customers with a sleek, clean look. Baekok is exactly that kind of stylish place foreign tourists would love. The interior is neat and modern, and the kitchen is open, like a Western restaurant. I went up to the 2nd floor for a snap. There aren't a huge number of seats, but customers keep coming in and the tables turn over well.

There are also rooms inside, so it's good for meals or group dinners. There are private rooms for up to 10 people, and a private restroom is apparently provided when you reserve a room for 6-10.

On the way out, there are care items like dental floss set out. The staff seemed to be foreigners, and they were friendly and quick, which I personally liked. You order by QR: scan the QR code on the menu and order through Toss. Hui and my partner ordered the half-plate cold pork (₩10,000), pork gomtang (₩11,000), 2 cabbage mandu (₩4,000) and mung bean pancake (₩15,000)!

Half-plate cold pork: cheek meat with lemon and toha-jeot (freshwater shrimp paste)

The half-plate cold pork at Baekok Yongsan is ₩10,000: chewy, cooked pork cheek served cold with toha-jeot (salted freshwater shrimp). The soy sauce with shiitake mushrooms added for texture left an impression.

Baekok's cold pork half plate, from the stylish Korean place near Yongsan Station behind HYBE. Pork cheek is cooked until chewy and eaten cold with toha-jeot. It's my kind of dish, and I've even tried copying it at home. Here's another thing that feels refined: the kkakdugi (cubed radish kimchi) comes in small pieces rather than big ones, so it's easy to eat. The soy sauce has pickled chili and onion, plus chopped shiitake mushrooms for texture, and that combination was really good.

Squeeze lemon over it first, then try a piece:

chewy meat.

It's cold, yet there's no gamey smell at all. The meat has none to begin with, and the lemon doubles the freshness. The meat isn't sliced paper-thin; it comes with some thickness, and the bite itself is great. The springy, nicely boiled cheek meat texture comes together really well.

The chewiness of pork cheek, the freshness of lemon and the texture of the meat add up to something with a slight Western touch, a style that anyone, young or old, and foreigners too, would be bound to like.

With the chewy meat, the soy sauce and toha-jeot bring out layered savoriness. It was good with onion and good with chili too.

Pork gomtang with a clear, grease-free broth

The pork gomtang at Baekok Yongsan is ₩11,000: thinly sliced sow front-leg meat on toryeom (rice warmed by repeatedly pouring hot broth over it). Unlike sagol gomtang (beef bone soup), the clear broth doesn't cling to your mouth, and you can slurp it down.

The pork gomtang arrived while I was eating the cold pork. Salt and pepper sit at the side of the table, so you can season it to taste.

Thinly sliced sow front-leg meat is piled generously over the toryeom rice and topped with green onion. Tasting the broth first:

clean and delicious.

Above all, there's almost no grease. It doesn't coat your mouth like sagol gomtang; it's a clear broth you can slurp. Nothing lingers in your mouth, so it's a flavor nobody will dislike.

Just like the cold pork, the meat has no gamey smell at all. It's sliced much thinner than pork for jeyuk-bokkeum (spicy stir-fried pork), so the texture of the front leg is distinctive and good. A fine balance of fat and meat, the thin-sliced bite, and how it all goes down with the rice. It's a refined gukbap that anyone would like. They also have a wide range of traditional liquors, so I thought bringing a foreign friend who likes HYBE to look around and then eat here would make a decent outing.

Cabbage dumplings (2 pcs): mild and wholesome

The 2-piece cabbage mandu (dumplings) at Baekok Yongsan is ₩4,000, and adding ₩4,000 to a gukbap price gets you a set with 2 cabbage mandu and a cola. The filling of meat, kimchi, tofu and glass noodles is packed in, wrapped in cabbage and steamed.

I ordered 2 pieces of cabbage mandu. There's a lot of meat inside the cabbage, packed full with meat, kimchi, tofu and glass noodles.

Taking a bite:

a wholesome flavor.

It's not harsh, and the filling isn't heavily seasoned, so the cabbage-wrapped, steamed mandu tastes fresh. It has a mild quality like temple food. If the other dishes were strong, this mildness might feel out of place, but Baekok's food is generally not heavily seasoned, so it actually goes well with the cabbage mandu. There's also a set with gukbap: add ₩4,000 to the gukbap price and you get 2 cabbage mandu plus a cola.

Mung bean pancake with shiitake soy sauce

The mung bean pancake (nokdujeon) at Baekok Yongsan is ₩15,000, pan-fried with plenty of pork and vegetables for a nutty flavor. Dipped in the shiitake soy sauce that came with the cold pork, it gained extra savoriness.

Baekok Yongsan's mung bean pancake. It's pan-fried with plenty of pork and vegetables for a nutty flavor.

It's generous with pork and vegetables, with just the right amount of oil, crisp-fried with a slight mung bean aroma. It doesn't feel like the traditional mung bean pancake you'd eat at a market like Gwangjang Market; it feels like a refined dish. Dipped in the shiitake soy sauce from earlier, the savoriness and saltiness get a boost and complete the flavor. Personally, I was satisfied with this one.

Is Baekok Yongsan worth it? Final verdict

Baekok, a stylish Korean place near Yongsan Station behind HYBE. A clear, deep pork gomtang with no grease, chewy cold pork with no gamey smell, mild and wholesome cabbage mandu, and a refined-feeling mung bean pancake. For a gukbap place, it's

clean and stylish.

The flavors aren't strong and the ingredients' own taste comes through, so your mouth doesn't feel heavy afterward; it stays clean. It feels like a traditional gukbap place reinterpreted in a stylish way, succeeded somewhere like New York, and then brought back to Korea. It's well placed for a stop after HYBE sightseeing, and with the traditional liquor lineup it's good with a foreign friend, or as a date after Yongsan I'Park Mall or the National Museum of Korea. With rooms available it works for group dinners too, and free corkage for wine and whiskey is a plus. It was a neat, enjoyable meal.

Hui's one-line review: Korean food, stylishly reinterpreted