One Fish, 50+ Names: Korea's Pollock Identity Crisis, Explained

It sounds made up.

Korea has exactly this fish. Pollock. Depending on the season it's caught, how it's caught, and — above all — how it's processed afterward, it gets called something completely different each time. That leads to something genuinely strange: Koreans themselves sometimes argue over whether "dongtae-tang" and "saengtae-jjigae" on two different restaurant menus are even the same fish.

dongtae-tang

Back in the kodari-jjim post, I promised I'd unpack this properly someday. Today's that day.

Quick Answer

• Myeongtae (명태) is a white fish in the cod family. Its scientific name is Gadus chalcogrammus (formerly classified as Theragra chalcogramma), known in English as Alaska pollock or walleye pollock.
• It has so many names because Koreans historically named it differently depending on the season it was caught, the method used to catch it, its size, and above all, how it was processed or dried. Korea's National Folk Museum puts the total count at 50, sometimes cited as high as 60-plus.
• Eight names cover almost everything you'll actually run into: saengtae, dongtae, kodari, hwangtae, bugeo, nogari, meoktae, and jjaktae.
• Saengtae is fresh and unfrozen, dongtae is frozen, kodari is half-dried, hwangtae and bugeo are both fully dried (through different methods), nogari is dried juvenile pollock, and meoktae is hwangtae that turned dark during drying.
• Behind all these names sits a real history: pollock was once so abundant across the entire Korean peninsula that it became known as the "national fish nothing goes to waste on."

1. What Myeongtae Actually Is

Myeongtae is a white fish in the cod family. Its scientific name is Gadus chalcogrammus (it was previously classified under the synonym Theragra chalcogramma), and in English it's usually called Alaska pollock or walleye pollock.

It lives deep in cold water, which meant it wasn't reliably caught in bulk until fishing technology caught up. But once it was, everything changed. Joseon-era records describe pollock catches piled up "like stacked firewood" — the fish spread from Hamgyong Province all the way across the entire peninsula, becoming cheap and ubiquitous.

More than that, almost nothing about it went to waste. The innards became changnan-jeot (salted pollock guts), the roe became myeongnan-jeot (salted pollock roe), the gills got salted too, and even the eyeballs were grilled up as a drinking snack. The flesh, bones, and skin all had their own uses.

2. Why It Has So Many Names

Several overlapping criteria are behind pollock's split naming system.

• Processing and drying state: fresh, frozen, or dried — and to what degree.
• Size and age: juvenile versus fully grown.
• Season caught: spring versus autumn.
• Method caught: net versus hook-and-line.

Korea's National Folk Museum explains it as names diverging "by size, catch method, catch season, and processing state." No single agency sat down and assigned these names — they grew organically over centuries across different regions and situations, and the ones that stuck are still in use today.

3. The Eight Names You'll Actually Run Into

You don't need to memorize the full list. These are the names you'll realistically encounter on a restaurant menu or at a market.

Name	State	Typically eaten as
Saengtae	Fresh, unfrozen	Saengtae-jjigae (fresh pollock stew)
Dongtae	Frozen (often flash-frozen)	Dongtae-tang, dongtae-jeon (pan-fried fillets)
Kodari	Dried to roughly the halfway point	Kodari-jjim (braised pollock)
Hwangtae	Dried outdoors over 3+ months through repeated winter freeze-thaw cycles	Hwangtae-gui (grilled), hwangtae haejang-guk
Bugeo	Fully dried — the general term for dried pollock	Bugeokuk, bugeo-chae-muchim (shredded dried pollock salad)
Nogari	Juvenile pollock (roughly 15–20 cm), dried whole	Classic beer-hall snack
Meoktae	Hwangtae that turned dark during drying because the weather ran too warm	Currently trending pub snack
Jjaktae	Pollock split open and salted or half-dried (definitions vary by source and region)	Varies by shop and region

I covered kodari in more depth in an earlier post — including the "strung through the nose" theory behind its name, and why that origin story isn't actually confirmed.

4. Hwangtae's Story: Yongdae-ri and the Magic of Freezing and Thawing

The hwangtae that gets treated as the "real thing" comes from one specific place: Yongdae-ri, in Inje County, Gangwon Province. The village is famous for its massive outdoor drying racks, known as deokjang.

Winters here are brutal, regularly dropping below −30°C. But that brutality is exactly the point. As the pollock partially thaws during the day and refreezes overnight, over and over across the whole winter, the flesh swells up into a spongy texture. That texture is what sets Yongdae-ri hwangtae apart from dried pollock made anywhere else. (By contrast, some East Coast regions dry pollock that stays frozen straight through winter without the thaw cycle — that produces a much denser result, closer to bugeo.)

The story goes that Yongdae-ri's hwangtae industry started in the early 1960s, when two brothers who'd originally been in the ice business were persuaded by a merchant from nearby Geojin to switch to freezing and drying pollock instead.

5. Why Bugeokuk Is the Definitive Hangover Soup

Bugeokuk is one of Korea's oldest and most widely recognized hangover-recovery soups.

Tradition has it that wives would make this for husbands stumbling home late — and the first step in cooking it was beating the rock-hard dried pollock with a laundry mallet just to soften it up.

There's real nutritional logic behind it, too. Bugeo is rich in amino acids known to support liver function — alanine, glycine, methionine, taurine — plus inosinic acid. It's low in fat, which keeps the broth light and clean, and the scallions typically added are believed to stimulate digestive secretion. Here's the interesting part: those liver-supporting compounds are actually more concentrated in the head, bones, fins, and tail than in the pure fillet. That's why traditional bugeokuk doesn't just use the meat — it uses the whole dried fish.

6. Meoktae's Recent Rise: The Snack That Broke Convenience Stores

Meoktae started life as basically a byproduct of making hwangtae. If the weather runs warmer than expected during the outdoor drying process, the fish doesn't turn golden — it comes out dark instead. That "wrong-colored" hwangtae is meoktae.

Somewhere around 2022 to 2023, meoktae exploded as a pub snack. Then in June 2023, Nongshim rode that wave and launched a chip snack called "Meoktae-kkang." It sold 670,000 bags in its first four days and crossed 1 million bags within a week, triggering a genuine shortage. A bag that retailed for 1,700 won was reselling for 3,500 to 4,000 won on secondhand markets. Nongshim scaled up production by roughly 30 percent, and cumulative sales hit around 6 million bags by that September.

A fish that had essentially been treated as a drying mishap turned into the star of a convenience-store shortage within a matter of years.

7. Wait, Really 50-Plus? The Rare Ones

The eight names above are the ones you'll actually encounter day to day. Beyond that, there's a whole layer of hyper-specific, rarely-used names.

• Nakksitae: pollock caught by hook-and-line.
• Mangtae: pollock caught by net.
• Chuntae: pollock caught in spring.
• Chutae: pollock caught in autumn.
• Gantae: pollock cured in salt.

Beyond these, names keep splitting further based on drying outcome and condition — nakdae, patae, baektae, goltae, mudutae (headless), and more. Namuwiki sums up the entire list by calling pollock "the fish with the most names in Korea."

8. Even Koreans Get This Wrong

This isn't just something fun to say — Korean media and public institutions have actually built content specifically to address the confusion.

One Korean-language column opens by noting that one restaurant will label a dish "dongtae-tang" while another calls the same thing "saengtae-jjigae," and that plenty of people genuinely can't tell whether they're the same fish. A youth-focused current-affairs outlet ran a piece literally titled "Pollock, exactly how many names do you have?" — written specifically to explain that saengtae, dongtae, bugeo, hwangtae, nogari, and kodari are all the same fish. Even the Korean consulate in Toronto published cultural content titled "Same fish, different name?" for overseas Koreans and foreign readers.

In other words, this confusion isn't unique to foreigners. It's real enough that Korean journalism and even a government cultural office have thought it was worth explaining.

FAQ

Are saengtae and dongtae the same fish? Yes. Both are pollock — the only difference is whether it's been frozen. Saengtae is unfrozen and fresh; dongtae is frozen.

What's the difference between hwangtae and bugeo? Both are fully dried pollock, but the drying method differs. Hwangtae goes through repeated outdoor freeze-thaw cycles over 3-plus months, which makes the flesh swell up spongy. Bugeo is a more general term for pollock dried hard without that specific process.

Is nogari just baby pollock? Yes. Nogari is dried juvenile pollock, roughly 15 to 20 cm long, and it's the classic snack you'll find at Korean beer halls.

Does pollock really have more than 50 names? According to sources like Korea's National Folk Museum, yes. Names split apart based on size, catch method, season, and processing state, adding up to somewhere between 50 and 60-plus depending on the source. In everyday use, though, it narrows down to roughly the eight covered here.

What to Do Next

Pollock was that common, and that thoroughly used, in Korea. The sheer fact that it carries more than 50 names is itself evidence of how long, and in how many forms, this fish has sat on Korean tables.

Three things to try:

1. Next time you spot both "dongtae-tang" and "saengtae-jjigae" on the same menu, remember the only difference is whether it was frozen.
2. Next time you pass the kodari or hwangtae section at a Korean grocery store, see how many of today's names you can actually spot.
3. Order nogari at a beer hall and taste the juvenile version of this fish for yourself.

TL;DR

1. Pollock splits into more than 50 names in Korean depending on catch method, season, size, and processing state — making it, by most accounts, the most-named fish in the country.
2. The eight names you'll actually encounter — saengtae, dongtae, kodari, hwangtae, bugeo, nogari, meoktae, and jjaktae — mostly come down to differences in how dry the fish is.
3. This confusion isn't a foreigner problem — Korean journalism and even a government consulate have published content specifically to explain that these are all the same fish.

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Related reading: Kodari-jjim: Why Korea Dries Its Fish Halfway Before Braising It

Sources: 명태 - Namuwiki; 명태야, 넌 이름이 몇 개니? - kidshankook.kr; 인제 용대리 황태의 원조 - Gangwon Domin Ilbo; 북엇국 - Namuwiki; 먹태깡 - Namuwiki; 같은 생선, 다른 이름? - Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Toronto