While wandering around the Namdaemun Market in Seoul looking for interesting market pictures to take I noticed steam rising from the centre of a small crowd. I was outside the popular king dumpling shop known as Kame Yeanal Son Wang Mandu (가메 엣날 손 왕 만두) and roughly translated means old fashioned handmade king dumplings.Namdaemun Market Korean Won
The dumplings are known as mandu, there are two types of dumpling, pork mandu or the spicy gimchi pork mandu. The outside of the mandu is a moist flour wrapping and inside it’s filled with pork, onions, cabbage and seasoning.
The dumplings are packaged into pink cardboard boxes, and people are seen buying them in lots of 20, 30 or more at a time. A couple of the prices are 2,000 won ($2 USD) for 3 or 10,000 ($9 USD) for 20 if you have a rather large appetite, definitely good value for the cost and quality.
This Kame Yeanal Son Wang Shop is known locally just as Kamegol (it’s written in Korean on the white apron) has been selling these tasty king dumplings or mandu in Seoul’s Namdaemun Market since 1959. If they have been in business for that length of time you know that you just have to stop by this mandu shop when in Namdaemun Market to taste these delicious king dumplings!
I was keen to get closer with my photographs and get some ‘action shots’ of the buying and selling but the small crowd kept me at a distance and the only way I could get the pictures was by holding my camera up high above my head, crossing my fingers and pointing down onto the steaming mandu to get the shots you see here.