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London’s new Korean food festival tests authenticity in K-wave era
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By
Jiji Ahn
Published
May 4, 2026 9:06 pm
KST
Jung Festival of Korean food at London's King's Cross, May 1 / Courtesy of Jiji Ahn
LONDON — What was billed as London’s largest Korean food festival quickly drew overwhelming crowds and equally long queues.
Held over the May bank holiday weekend from May 1 to 4 near King’s Cross, Jung Festival brought together around 30 vendors, including hot food stalls, dessert teams and sponsored brands such as Jongga and Bibigo. The event was co-organized by Korean cultural platform Market Root, which hosts pop-up events showcasing Korean and Korean-inspired designers and brands, alongside food content creator Rollin Lee.
The festival had already gained traction online before opening day. But as videos of packed walkways and hourlong queues began circulating on social media, the scale of interest became immediately clear. A timed entry system was introduced for the remaining days as additional crowd control measures, with slots quickly selling out, highlighting both the demand for the event and the challenges of managing it.
Some visitors chose to leave before entering, while others who had traveled from outside London expressed frustration at the long waits, both to get in and to order food. Several stalls also sold out early, suggesting that demand had exceeded expectations and that planners had not fully accounted for the scale of interest.
Yet the turnout signaled something undeniable: Korean food in London is no longer niche, but its rapid rise is beginning to expose its limitations.
Jung Festival of Korean food at London's King's Cross, May 1 / Courtesy of Jiji Ahn
From niche to mainstream
Over the past decade, Korean food has been entering the mainstream steadily in the U.K. Restaurants, supermarkets and delivery platforms have made Korean-inspired dishes more widely available than ever.
But as interest has grown, so too has adaptation. Korean flavors have been folded into burgers, fried chicken and fusion menus, often prioritizing accessibility over accuracy. For some Koreans in London, this has led to a growing concern that the cuisine is being simplified or at times misrepresented.
Jung Festival arrives at precisely this moment, when Korean food is widely recognized, but not always fully understood.
The organizers were clear about their intentions from the outset.
“We wanted to show how diverse Korean food really is,” said Kim Hyeon-ju, who moved to the U.K. several years ago and later co-founded Market Root with Yang Soo-jin.
The food offering reflected that ambition to move beyond the most familiar dishes.
Alongside staples such as tteokbokki and gimbap were items less commonly found in London, including eel gimbap, Korean-style salt bread, sundae (Korean blood sausage), kkwabaegi (twisted donuts) and chicken skewers typical of Korean street markets. These are foods many Koreans would associate with everyday life in Korea rather than restaurant menus abroad.
In that sense, the organizers largely succeeded.
What sets Jung Festival apart from other Korean-themed events in London was its focus. Rather than presenting Korean culture as a broad, generalized concept, the festival centers food as its primary lens, bringing together vendors that reflect both everyday Korean eating habits and more niche, less commercially visible dishes.
For Londoners already familiar with Korean cuisine, the appeal lies not in introduction but in recognition: foods that are rarely found in restaurants, presented in a setting that mirrors how they are typically experienced in Korea.
However, the experience itself did not always match that ambition. While the range of food was strong on paper, navigating the space and accessing that variety proved more difficult in practice. Clearer signposting, particularly around dishes that are less widely available in the U.K., would have helped visitors better understand what was on offer.
Jung Festival of Korean food at London's King's Cross, May 1 / Courtesy of Jiji Ahn
Authenticity under pressure
Much of the festival’s meaning emerged through its vendors, many of whom were actively negotiating how Korean food should be presented to Londoners.
B.Road London pastry chef Hwang Goong-yeon, who also works at the Michelin-starred restaurant Sketch, described Korean baking as both experimental and deeply rooted in memory and emotion. Her brand name reflects this philosophy: “B” for “to be,” and “Road” for forging her own path.
Her menu included items such as Korean-style “pizza bread,” a sweet and savory snack commonly sold outside schools in Korea. For many Koreans, it is a familiar, nostalgic food, one that reflects how Korean baking blends global influences with local tastes.
“Korean desserts have a softness and warmth to them. We take familiar ingredients and reinterpret them,” she said.
“If we change everything to fit local tastes, we lose what makes it Korean.”
While the concept was compelling, not every item felt fully realized, highlighting the challenge of translating that distinctiveness consistently in a high-volume setting.
At Dak Kkochi Express, authenticity was expressed through scale, flavor and memory.
Founder Go Jae-myeon, who previously ran food trucks in Korea, set out to recreate the experience of Korean street food in London. His signature 30-centimeter chicken skewers are significantly larger than those typically found in the U.K., coated in a gochujang (pepper paste)-based sauce designed to reflect the taste of Korean markets.
Key ingredients such as gochugaru (Korean chilli powder) are sourced directly from Korea, as the quality available in the U.K. did not meet his standards. Other elements, such as halal chicken, reflect local considerations.
The stall also leaned into nostalgia. Go and his wife, Indee Katar, wore retro-style Korean school uniforms, while traditional games such as ppopgi (Korean sugar candy) added a cultural dimension to the experience.
Jung Festival of Korean food at London's King's Cross, May 1 / Courtesy of Jiji Ahn
Rethinking what ‘K’ means
At Ogam, the conversation moved beyond authenticity to something more fundamental: how Korean identity is defined in food and drink.
Bartender Kim Tae-yeol, who has worked in the industry for more than 17 years and has spent seven years in the U.K., recently rebranded his business to focus on cocktails, placing greater emphasis on craft and ingredients.
“It’s not just about calling something ‘Korean,’” he said. “It’s about the person making it, the technique and the story behind it.”
He noted that bartenders from other backgrounds are rarely defined by their nationality in the same way, and hopes that his work will be approached similarly. His drinks incorporate Korean ingredients and traditional alcohol, but are not positioned as “K-cocktails.” Instead, the focus is on balance, technique and quality.
At the festival, a tomato-based cocktail stood out for its clean, refreshing profile, demonstrating how Korean influence can exist without being reduced to a label.
Music from the 1980s and 1990s played by a DJ in the main food space helped create a retro atmosphere reminiscent of Korean markets, adding to the overall setting without leaning too heavily on more commercialized K-pop cues.
Together, these elements offered a more layered representation of Korean culture, appealing across generations and extending beyond its most globally recognizable forms.
Jung Festival of Korean food at London's King's Cross, May 1 / Courtesy of Jiji Ahn
Who is this festival really for?
Perhaps the most important question raised by Jung Festival is who it is ultimately for.
For some Korean attendees, the event offered a sense of pride. One visitor described being “amazed at how many people are interested in Korean culture and food,” while others pointed to specific dishes that reminded them of home. For others, the festival functioned as an accessible entry point into a cuisine they were already beginning to explore. In that sense, Jung Festival appears to have struck a balance, offering familiarity to some and discovery to others.
But the festival also revealed the challenges of meeting demand at scale. Korean food in London has moved beyond introduction. The next question is not simply how to grow its presence, but how to define what is being represented, for whom and to what standard.
One organizer noted that they hoped visitors would leave having felt a sense of “jung,” the Korean concept of warmth, connection and shared experience.
At its best, the festival gestures towards that. But it also highlights how difficult it is to deliver it at scale. And in that tension, between intention and execution, between popularity and authenticity, is where the future of Korean food in London now sits.
Jiji Ahn is a London-based journalist who covers both cultural and political stories with a focus on Korea. She reports for BBC News and previously worked for CNBC International and NBCUniversal. Fluent in Korean, she provides reporting and analysis on Korea’s role on the global stage.
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