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'Let's get gogi': How beef became Korea's celebratory meat

Published: 10 Jan. 2026, 08:08

KIM MIN-YOUNG
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Employees of Hyundai Department Store's Coex branch in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, show hanwoo (Korean beef) gift sets sold ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday. [NEWS1]

Gogi is a straightforward word that means "meat" in Korean, right until the moment someone passes an exam, lands a prestigious job or closes a billion-dollar deal.

Koreans will tell you gogi is just meat, and in theory, it is: pork, chicken, grilled meat in general, even fish. However, for special days that deserve celebration, the definition narrows fast and starts sounding very much like "beef." Not just any beef at that, but the pricey hanwoo (Korean premium beef).

How did celebration gogi come to mean specifically beef, and why does it still carry so much weight?

“Gogi” rarely means pork belly

Part of the confusion is that gogi is intentionally vague. It can refer to any type of meat, cooked or not. In older usage, particularly in coastal communities, it could even mean fish.

“We all know it doesn’t mean pork belly,” says Professor Joo Young-ha, a Korean food scholar. Pork belly is absolutely “meat,” and it has been the backbone of company dinners for decades. But the celebratory version of the phrase often carries a different implication: not just any meat, but a treat that feels unmistakably pricey.

In practice, that often means hanwoo or a “proper” grilled meat restaurant where the bill itself signals the size of the celebration. You are not asking for dinner. You are asking for generosity that feels unmistakable.

An online user shares a photo of fatty pork belly cut on the grill in online community Bobaedream in late April, which sparked a heated debate. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Why beef became the prestige benchmark

Korea’s attachment to beef rivals that of societies across the globe. In many countries, animal protein has historically been associated with wealth and power because it was harder to produce, store and distribute than grains.

What is distinctive in Korea is how strongly beef, and later hanwoo, became a dish that denoted a “special day.”

For much of Korea’s agrarian past, cattle were not primarily food. They were labor assets, central to farming and tightly woven into policy and everyday life. Slaughter was often regulated, and that kind of control tends to intensify desire. When something is restricted because it is valuable, wanting it feels normal, even rational.

Those older meanings did not vanish with modernization. They lingered as cultural residue, shaping how people read menus long after Korea transitioned to modernity.

“A White Bull” by Lee Jung-seob is part of the exhibition titled “Lee Kun-hee Collection: Encounter” held at Jeonnam Museum of Art in Gwangyang. Extra exhibitions are held throughout various parts of South Jeolla Province before and after the Jeonnam International Sumuk Biennale and “Encounter” is one of them. [JEONNAM MUSEUM OF ART]

A government that wanted people to eat pork

The turning point came from the late 1970s into the 1980s. Meat changed from a “rare special food” to a “sometimes food.” This is where politics enters the family dinner table.

Korea was still using cattle as farm labor into the early 1980s, which constrained beef supply and kept prices high. "The Park Chung Hee administration had reasons to worry," said Joo. "The government emphasized pork and ran campaigns telling people to eat pork."

Food prices affect everyday life, and everyday life affects political legitimacy. Encouraging pork consumption was one way to relieve pressure on beef demand, broaden protein access and stabilize the sense of rising living standards.

Late President Park Chung Hee attends a Foreign Ministry's annual briefing on Jan. 31, 1974. [JOONGANG ILBO]

"Grilled pork belly is cheaper than beef, but its fat makes it especially satisfying, and it became hugely popular among the working class," said food columnist Lee Yong-jae.

The full-scale construction of modern-style ranches in Korea began with the establishment of the four-year livestock promotion plan drawn up in the spring of 1968, according to the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture. The plan allowed the government to offer various financial and tax incentives to encourage corporate, large-scale ranch operations.

That shift helped normalize pork dishes that could substitute as a cheaper alternative to beef in everyday meals. Pork became the “democratic” protein of the new consumer era, and office culture soon followed. By the early 1990s, for many workers, the default company dinner was pork belly, not beef.

The irony is that pork’s rise did not erase beef’s symbolism — it sharpened it. In the rat race for social mobility, pork became the fuel and beef the trophy waiting at the finish line.

A department store in Seoul shows the hanwoo, or Korean beef, gift sets they sell on Jan. 7, ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays. [YONHAP]

Hanwoo: “Perfectly aspirational”

In today’s Korea, premium domestic beef is widely known and highly desired, but for many people it remains a “special bill,” not an everyday purchase. “If a family of four or five eats hanwoo properly, you can spend close to a million won,” said Joo.

At the highest end, though, the logic of status dining changes. The ultra-rich can chase rarity for its own sake: caviar service, chef’s table tastings, wine pairing menus and private rooms with discreet staff. Those meals signal power through exclusivity and curated taste, not through broad popularity.

Gogi, by contrast, is a “common denominator luxury.” It is expensive enough to feel like a real reward, but mainstream enough that nobody needs an explanation. You do not need cultural capital to enjoy it. You just need someone willing to pay.

“Offering meat is a middle-class desire,” said Joo. It is “perfectly aspirational.”

Yellowtail sashimi served at a restaurant in Gangnam District, Mapo District, southern Seoul [CHAE TAE-YEON]

The sashimi detour

Beef has not always been the top symbol of corporate treats. In Seoul’s business districts, particularly from the 1990s into the early 2000s, Japanese-style sashimi restaurants often represented high-end entertainment for professionals.

The venues offered quiet rooms, careful service and discretion. What executives were buying was not just fish — it was privacy and atmosphere.

But prestige is fragile. Categories that become more accessible can lose their exclusive aura.

“What pushed people to shift business dinners back toward meat, I think, was when tuna sashimi became mainstream,” Joo says. As tuna-focused chains expanded and prices plummeted, “sashimi” felt less rare, even if elite places remained elite.

Around the same time, domestic beef gained a new premium identity as imported beef expanded and hanwoo was framed as a high-value product. In that landscape, treating someone to hanwoo became an easily understood signal again, especially as a way to impress without needing a niche vocabulary of taste.

Hoesik scene depicted in a TV drama series titled “What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim” (2018) [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Will “gogi” last?

When a boss, senior colleague or client offers to pay for gogi, the menu becomes a message. Korea celebrates in crowds: colleagues, classmates, teams, friends.

Once the group is large enough, the menu is less about individual preference and more about shared agreement. Gogi is familiar, filling, customizable and easy to share. People sit around a hot grill, order rounds, share side dishes, pour drinks and stay longer than planned.

"If you eat dishes that come out already cooked, or things like sashimi that don't require any cooking, you end up staying focused on eating the whole time," said Lee. "But when you grill meat at the table, you have to wait while it cooks, whether you intend to or not. Little gaps for conversation naturally open up in between."

"Black spoon" chefs that will appear on the second season of Netflix cooking survival show "Culinary Class Wars" [NETFLIX]

However, among younger Koreans, celebration meals are already diversifying, particularly in friend groups where everyone splits the bill. You might see mala hot pot, sashimi or whatever is trending online, including the increasingly popular realm of fine dining.

While gogi may or may not be fading, it doesn't seem like the underlying mythos is changing anytime soon. The menu symbolizes the aspirational desire of upward mobility, a distillation of the success ethic that has dominated the Korean imagination since the days of modernization.

After all, even to this day, Seoul's financial district is filled with disheveled salarymen betraying the sullen yet ambitious eyes signaling to their superiors: Treat me, and make it count.

BY KIM MIN-YOUNG [[email protected]]