Yoon Jong Gye, the restaurateur who helped transform fried chicken from a borrowed American import into one of South Korea’s most distinctive foods, has died after a long illness. He was 74.
His family said Yoon died on 30 December at his home in Cheongdo in the North Gyeongsang province, according to The Korea Herald.
Yoon’s name might not be widely known outside South Korea, but the dish he created went on to travel far beyond the small Daegu neighbourhood where it was first served. Today, fried chicken is one of the most familiar entry points to Korean cuisine overseas, sold by thousands of outlets and closely associated with the global rise of Korean food and popular culture.
Korean fried chicken’s global presence and Yoon’s creation of the sweet-and-spicy “yangnyeom” variant could be traced back to a moment of reinvention in the early 1980s.
Born in the southeastern Daegu city in April 1952, Yoon did not start his career in food. He ran a small printing business which collapsed in the late 1970s, pushing him into the restaurant trade.
Left with limited capital, he opened a tiny fried chicken shop in Daegu’s Hyomok-dong neighbourhood.
Fried chicken had been available in South Korea for years at this point as American military bases and Western preparations continued to influence local diets after the Second World War. By the late 1970s, fried chicken was familiar but relatively plain; crisp but lightly seasoned and often criticised for being dry.
Working alone in his shop, Yoon set out to rework the dish.
“In the early days, with a store barely two pyeong [around 6 sqm] in size, the dryness of the chicken meat was a constant concern. I tried various kimchi-based seasonings but failed. An elderly woman passing by suggested adding corn syrup, and that’s when the flavour came alive,” he told tvN’s You Quiz on the Block in 2020, via The Chosun Daily.
After six months of experimentation, Yoon developed what would inevitably become yangnyeom chicken: fried chicken coated in a sweet, spicy red sauce made from chilli powder and starch syrup, paired with a brining process that ensured the meat stayed tender.
The response wasn’t immediately enthusiastic. Early customers reportedly complained that the sauce was quite sticky and awkward to eat. But curiosity grew as word spread. The demand swiftly followed, and people from outside Daegu began travelling specifically to eat it.
Yoon is also credited with inventing chicken-mu, a lightly pickled radish side dish now routinely served with fried chicken in South Korea.
His wife, Hwang Ju Young, told The Chosun Daily that he created it after hearing customers say eating chicken on its own felt heavy.
In 1985, Yoon formally registered the business under the name “Mexican Chicken”, referring to the flavour profile rather than the country. Additionally, he made another unusual move for the time and commissioned South Korea’s first television advertisement for fried chicken. The commercial featured Lee Geon Joo, a child actor who was widely recognised from the sitcom Three Families Under One Roof, a canny move that led to a surge in sales.
Mexican Chicken expanded rapidly during South Korea’s franchise boom. At its peak, the chain ran 1,700 outlets nationwide, according to Maeil Business Newspaper.
The business later struggled amid attempts to modernise operations and closed around 2003.
By the time Korean fried chicken gained popularity overseas in the 2000s, yangnyeom chicken had already become the domestic industry benchmark. South Korea’s fried chicken franchise sector now generates about 8 trillion won ($6bn) per year in sales, according to Maeil Business, with some 30,000 chicken outlets operating across the country.
Major Korean chicken brands, built on the model Yoon pioneered, now run thousands of locations in China, Southeast Asia, Europe, North America, and the Middle East.
Yoon was laid to rest at the Cheongdo Daeseong Church cemetery after a funeral service on 1 January. He is survived by his wife and a son named Yoon Jun Sik.
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