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Yoon Jong-gye, father of the Korean-style seasoned chicken, dies aged 74

Published: 09 Jan. 2026, 10:26 Updated: 09 Jan. 2026, 11:56

The father of Korean seasoned spicy chicken, Yoon Jong-gye, has died at the age of 74 at his home in North Gyeongsang on Dec. 30, 2025. [TVN]

The father of Korean seasoned spicy chicken, Yoon Jong-gye, has died. He was 74. Yoon passed away from a chronic illness at his home in Cheongdo, North Gyeongsang, around 5 a.m. on Dec. 30, 2025, his family said Thursday.

Yoon, founder of the fried chicken brand Mexicana Chicken, has been credited with inventing Korea’s iconic seasoned fried chicken, or yangnyeom chicken, and pickled radish side dish.

Born in April 1952 in Daegu, Yoon entered the food industry after a printing shop he ran went bankrupt in the late 1970s. He opened a small fried chicken shop called Gyeseong Tongdak in the city’s Hyomok-dong neighborhood.

In 1980, looking for a way to make the dry meat of fried chicken more flavorful, he created a sweet and spicy yangnyeom sauce using corn syrup and chili powder, along with a unique marination method known in Korean as yeomji, which involves soaking chicken in a brine of salt, sugar and spices or rubbing it directly with seasoning powders. His innovation sparked a nationwide craze.

He said in a 2020 appearance on the tvN program “You Quiz on the Block” (2018-) that he initially experimented with kimchi seasoning but failed. “An old woman passing by told me to try corn syrup. Once I did, the flavor came alive.”

To cut the greasiness of the chicken, he also developed a pickled side dish — chicken- mu — made with radish, cucumber, vinegar and soda. He launched the Mexicana Chicken brand in 1985. The chain rose to prominence and grew to about 1,700 outlets at its peak.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY KIM JI-HYE [[email protected]]