Cook It Korean · Banchan Series
The favorite fish dish now made from zero domestic fish.
At Bucheon's Jayu Market, there's a stall that hangs rows of stiff, half-dried fish on strings through their noses — kodari, ready for braising. I used to grab a pack without thinking twice about where the fish actually came from. Turns out that's a bigger question than it sounds, because the honest answer is: not from Korea. Not anymore.
Why Does One Fish Have So Many Korean Names?
Pollock might be the most linguistically overworked fish in Korean cuisine — the same animal gets a completely different name depending on how it's processed. Here's the lineup, in order of how wet-to-dry each stage is:
Insider's Insight: Ask five Korean home cooks what makes "real" kodari-jorim and you'll get five different soy-sauce-to-gochugaru ratios. That's a dish that lives in home kitchens, not restaurant menus.
How Kodari-Jorim Is Actually Made
Score the semi-dried pollock, then simmer it in a sauce of soy sauce, gochugaru, minced garlic, ginger, and a spoon of sugar, with radish coins underneath to soak up the broth. Ladle the braising liquid back over the fish every few minutes so it doesn't dry out — 20 to 25 minutes on medium-low, until the sauce reduces to a glaze and the radish turns nearly translucent. Perilla leaves or green onion go on right at the end for a bitter, herbal note that cuts the sweetness.
The Timeline Nobody Puts in the Recipe Cards
Every piece of kodari sold in Korea today — including the strings at Jayu Market — is imported. Here's how that happened:
Korean boats haul in over 11,000 tonnes of pollock a year.
The catch collapses to a single tonne, as sea temperatures off the east coast rise roughly 2°C over five decades and push spawning grounds out of reach.
Korea bans wild pollock fishing entirely. A decade-long program releasing 1.9 million young pollock into the East Sea still fails to restore the population.
100% of Korea's kodari, dongtae, and hwangtae comes from Russian or North Pacific waters — Russia alone is projected to land close to 2 million tonnes this year.
Unlike gulbi (dried croaker), which is still mostly domestic, kodari's entire supply chain now runs through Russian fishing quotas. Korea, the country that once named this fish six different ways depending on how you dried it, doesn't catch a commercial quantity of it anymore.
Field Note: It's a strange kind of comfort food, honestly — a dish this tied to Korean home cooking, and most people never think to ask where the fish is from.
So does it matter that the fish is imported, if the dish, the technique, and the flavor are still entirely Korean? I'd argue no — cuisine adapts to what the sea gives you. Does knowing the backstory change how you'd order it next time? Let me know below.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What exactly is kodari?
Pollock strung through the nose and semi-dried for a few days — firmer than fresh fish but still moist inside, unlike fully dried hwangtae or bugeo.
Q: Is kodari-jorim spicy?
Moderately — the sauce combines soy sauce and gochugaru, so it's savory-sweet with mild to medium heat depending on the cook.
Q: Why is Korean pollock always imported now?
Korea has banned commercial wild pollock fishing since 2019 after catches collapsed from over 11,000 tonnes in 1970 to about 1 tonne by 2017, largely due to warming seas.
Q: How long does kodari-jorim take to cook?
About 20–25 minutes of simmering, until the sauce reduces to a thick glaze and the radish turns translucent.
Q: What's the difference between kodari, hwangtae, and bugeo?
All are dried pollock at different stages — kodari is lightly semi-dried, hwangtae is freeze-thaw dried over weeks, and bugeo is fully hardened and dried.
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Meta description: Kodari-jorim is Korea's beloved braised pollock dish — made entirely from fish Korea hasn't caught in its own waters since 2019.