Korean Snacks and the K-Wave: From Buldak to Demon Hunters

In November 1950, three sisters from Seoul — So-hee, Ae-ja and Min-ja Kim — performed for American GIs during the Korean War. They spoke no English but sang American pop songs phonetically, note-perfect, having learned them entirely by ear. When they arrived in the United States a few years later, they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show twenty-two times. They were the first Korean musicians to place a song on the Billboard chart. Nobody called it K-pop. The genre wouldn't get that name for decades. But the Kim Sisters were already doing the thing that would define Korean cultural exports for the next seventy years: presenting Korean performance to a Western audience and making it irresistible.

The path from the Kim Sisters to Buldak noodles in a Manchester corner shop is a long one. But it is a single unbroken line.

How K-Pop Was Built

Korean popular music went through several distinct phases before becoming the global industry it is today. In the 1990s, a group called Seo Taiji and Boys merged Korean pop with American hip-hop choreography, fusing the styles into something genuinely new. They were the first group that resembled what we now understand K-pop to be. The idol groups that followed — H.O.T., S.E.S., BIGBANG, Girls' Generation, TVXQ, Super Junior — refined and accelerated the formula: genre-bending music, impeccable styling, flawless choreography, and an extremely organised relationship with fan communities.

On November 19, 2017, BTS performed at the American Music Awards — their first US television performance. They had already broken multiple social media records. They went on to cover Rolling Stone, record a remix of Old Town Road with Lil Nas X, and become the first Korean act to appear in the Billboard Hot 100 top ten with a Korean-language song. BLACKPINK followed. Then Stray Kids, EXO, TWICE, Seventeen, NewJeans. Each group built on the infrastructure — the training system, the fan engagement model, the visual identity — that the previous generation had established. By the early 2020s, K-pop was not a niche genre. It was the largest-scale manufactured pop phenomenon on earth.

When Music Became Food

The cultural momentum of K-pop creates a secondary effect that is less discussed but commercially more significant for retail: it drives demand for Korean food. Fans who become invested in Korean artists become curious about Korean culture more broadly. K-dramas extend this — a television drama set in Seoul, watched by a British teenager, is a two-hour advertisement for Korean food, Korean interiors, Korean fashion. The South Korean government tracks this annually. Their 2024 Global Korean Wave Trend Analysis Report, based on 680,000 data points from international media, found that K-food was among the highest-coverage Hallyu categories globally. In the United Kingdom specifically, Korean food had some of the highest media coverage frequency of any country.

The mechanism is the screen. When Parasite won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2020 and the world noticed the Ram-Don scene — two different instant noodles combined with premium hanwoo beef — Korean instant noodles appeared on food trend lists across the UK and US press within weeks. When Squid Game aired in 2021 and a plot sequence centred on dalgona candy, British and American viewers searched for the honeycomb toffee and how to make it. Neither production was designed as food marketing. Both functioned as food marketing anyway.

The Fire Noodle Challenge and a British YouTuber

Samyang Buldak Hot Chicken Flavor Ramen launched in April 2012. The product originated when Kim Jung-soo, a Samyang sales executive, ate at a spicy chicken restaurant in 2010 and watched customers sweating and fanning their tongues while eating — experiencing what she described as simultaneous pleasure and pain. She told the food scientists to make it spicier. The resulting noodle measured 4,404 Scoville heat units — roughly the level of a jalapeño, though anyone who has cooked and eaten them will tell you the concentrated sauce in a drained bowl of noodles does not behave like a jalapeño.

In 2014, a British YouTuber named Josh Carrott — one half of the Korean Englishman channel, a British man who spoke Korean fluently — filmed himself challenging his British friends to finish a portion of Buldak noodles without drinking anything. The video went viral in Korea first, for an obvious reason: a British man speaking fluent Korean eating fire noodles with his British friends is inherently compelling to a Korean audience. The challenge spread globally. A search for 'Fire Noodle Challenge' returns over 700,000 YouTube results. The original video has 8.8 million views.

The commercial effect on Samyang was measurable and large. Revenue grew from approximately £51.5 million in 2016 to approximately £448.7 million in 2023. Buldak products accounted for more than 85 per cent of Samyang's exports in 2017. Four billion cumulative units had been sold by August 2022. Jimin of BTS — one of the most commercially influential people in the world at the height of that group's popularity — is a publicly known Buldak fan. In 2024, Denmark recalled the 3x Spicy variant on the grounds that its capsaicin levels risked acute poisoning. Being recalled by a government food authority for being too spicy is a brand story that advertising cannot buy.

KPop Demon Hunters: The Film That Changed Everything Again

Released on Netflix on June 20, 2025, KPop Demon Hunters is an animated musical fantasy following a K-pop girl group called HUNTR/X — Rumi, Mira and Zoey — who lead double lives as demon hunters. It was produced by Sony Pictures Animation, co-directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, and featured the voices of Arden Cho, Ken Jeong and Daniel Dae Kim alongside members of the real K-pop group TWICE performing original songs.

The film became the most popular title in Netflix history: 600 million views globally, top ten in all 93 countries where Netflix tracks it, number one in 76 of them. The soundtrack spent two weeks at number one on the Billboard 200 and achieved over fifteen billion streams globally — the most-streamed soundtrack of the decade. The hit song 'Golden' held the number one position on the Billboard Global 200 for eighteen weeks and became the first K-pop song ever to win a Grammy Award, winning Best Song Written for Visual Media at the 68th ceremony. KPop Demon Hunters then won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song at the 2026 Oscars — the first K-pop song to win an Academy Award, and the first time a woman of Korean descent had won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

The food connections in the film are direct and intentional. Buldak noodle cups appear in a fight scene. Korean street food — corn dogs, kimbap, tteokbokki — features throughout. Netflix partnered with Nongshim on official K-snack merchandise. McDonald's launched a 'Battle for the Fans' adult meal promotion. General Mills released limited-edition Lucky Charms and Cinnamon Toast Crunch in HUNTR/X and Saja Boys flavours — available from June 2025. The Band of the Scots Guards performed 'Golden' at Buckingham Palace. Korean language learners on Duolingo increased by 22 per cent in the film's first year. Flight reservations to South Korea spiked by 25 per cent.

A sequel is in development.

The High Street Shops

The physical retail consequence of Hallyu is visible on UK high streets in a way it was not ten years ago. A network of specialist K-pop shops has opened across England — not curiosity shops or import specialists in the back of a market, but proper retail destinations with cafes, photocard trading events, K-pop dance classes and community programmes.

In Manchester, K Stars moved to a larger store and cafe space in May 2024. In Nottingham, House of PKL describes itself as the UK's largest dedicated K-pop, K-beauty and Korean store. In Liverpool, the Tiny Kpop Shop operates from Red Brick Market in the Baltic Triangle. In Birmingham, HMV Vault runs a dedicated K-pop section. In London, shops including SOKOLLAB and K-Playground near Piccadilly Circus serve a fan community that treats them as social destinations as much as retail outlets — places to browse new album releases, trade photocards, attend fan events and be around other people who share the same interests.

These shops do not only sell albums and lightsticks. They sell Korean snacks and drinks alongside the merchandise, because Korean food and K-pop fandom are not separate interests for this consumer group. They are the same cultural commitment expressed through different purchases. A fan who buys a BLACKPINK album in a K-pop shop and buys a pack of Buldak noodles at the counter on the way out is doing the same thing both times: participating in Korean culture.

The Photocard Economy

The photocard is one of the more unusual commercial innovations to emerge from K-pop culture. Korean music labels began including randomly assigned photocards — small, trading-card-sized photographs of individual group members — with album purchases in the 1990s and 2000s. The randomness was deliberate: fans who wanted a complete set needed to buy multiple copies of the same album, or trade with other fans to complete their collection. Photocard trading events became social gatherings. Rare photocards acquired real secondary market value. The format moved from albums into merchandise, into event tickets, and into food products.

ROSE168L in the Sweet and Glory range is the K-Pop Stars Lollipop and Photocard — a confectionery product that directly inhabits this culture. A lollipop packaged with a K-pop photocard is not a novelty product aimed at uninitiated consumers. It is a product designed for a fan community that already understands what photocards are, already collects them, and is already looking for new ways to acquire them. For a K-pop shop in Manchester or Nottingham buying their confectionery wholesale, it is an exact fit.

The Range at Sweet and Glory

The Korean range at Sweet and Glory covers the breadth of the K-wave food phenomenon. The Buldak range includes Samyang Hot Chicken in the original, Carbonara and Cheese variants across cups, big bowls and 5-packs, plus the 2x Spicy format — the Buldak range confirmed safe for European markets, with the 3x Spicy variant (the one Denmark recalled) not stocked. Alongside the noodles, Buldak Potato Crisps bring the hot chicken flavour to a snack format in Original, Chilli & Lime and Cheese. Sweet 16 Korean Ade drinks cover nine fruit flavours — Pear, Blueberry, Watermelon, Green Grape, Blue Lemon, Pomegranate, Passion Mango, Peach and Yogurt — the lighter, widely accessible face of Korean drinks culture. And the K-Pop Stars Lollipop and Photocard sits exactly at the intersection of confectionery and fandom.

For the wider Asian imports picture, see the Japanese candy wholesale guide. Browse the full soft drinks range or the candy range. No minimum order. Free first parcel on orders over £150 ex VAT (additional boxes £7.10 each). Free pallet delivery over £650 ex VAT. Dispatched from Manchester.