Buldak Ramen has faith in becoming the 'bible of spice' amid global success

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Buldak Ramen has faith in becoming the 'bible of spice' amid global success

Published: 01 May. 2026, 07:00 Updated: 01 May. 2026, 10:30

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Buldak Ramen instant noodles are seen at a supermarket in Seoul in 2025. [YONHAP]

Buldak Ramen instant noodles, or ramyeon, were once dismissed as too spicy to eat. Now, Samyang Foods has turned it into one of Korea’s most successful global food brands.

The brand’s rise has been extraordinary in both scale and structure. Cumulative sales reached 8 billion units as of the first half last year, with about 80 percent sold overseas, and the producer of the ramyeon, Samyang Foods, has built a business around a single spicy noodle brand that now resembles the global model of food giants with export-heavy revenue. The company posted record sales last year and is expected to top 3 trillion won ($2.03 billion) this year, raising a broader question: How did one Korean noodle become a global category leader?

“We must become the bible for spiciness,” Kim Jung-soo, vice chair of Samyang Roundsquare, said at the opening ceremony for the company’s second plant in Miryang, South Gyeongsang, in June last year. Samyang Roundsquare is the parent company of Samyang Foods.

“As Buldak Carbonara currently enjoys the most love for its gentler heat, we will keep exploring and segmenting spicy flavors and broadening the range to show what a true bible of spice can be.”

Samyang Roundsquare's vice president Kim Jung-soo visits Samyang Foods' Buldak Ramen booth at the Coahcella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April 2025. [YONHAP]

The origin story behind Buldak instant noodles is now well known. Kim was inspired after seeing a long queue outside a spicy chicken restaurant in Myeongdong, central Seoul, during a visit with her daughter in 2010. After repeated trial and error involving 1,200 chickens and 2 tons of sauce, Samyang launched Buldak Ramen in 2012 to early reviews calling it too spicy for people to eat.

Buldak measures about 4,404 Scoville heat units (SHU), placing it in a similar range to a hot jalapeño (2,500 to 8,000 SHU), typical Tabasco sauce, or Korea’s popular Cheongyang chili peppers, which usually fall between 4,000 and 10,000 SHU.

At first, the tongue-numbing heat led some people to dismiss it as a novelty. But the tide soon turned.

Buldak became a regular feature in YouTube eating challenges starting in 2014. Its extreme heat triggered people’s competitive instincts, and the dramatic reactions after eating it became entertaining content. Later, the rise of short-form video on YouTube and TikTok gave another lift to Buldak when the instant noodle began selling overseas. Because those platforms are global by nature, the brand benefited from natural viral exposure even without heavy advertising spending.

With the rise in popularity of K-pop, Buldak naturally became one of the most well-known spicy Korean foods around the world.

Buldak Ramen instant noodles [SAMYANG FOODS]

With more and more people being exposed to K-pop artists, celebrities and YouTubers consuming Buldak, its spiciness came to be seen not just as a flavor but as a challenge, an experience and a source of fun.

Samyang reinforced that idea through what it calls a culture-based marketing. With Samyang Roundsquare's vice chairman calling to “make the Buldak brand a culture icon,” the company has been pushing the #buldakchallenge — a viral social media trend where people film themselves attempting to the instant noodles without drinking water or other liquids — and opened Buldak timed eating contests and dance challenges.

The ramyeon company also set up an experiential booth at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival last year, trying to position Buldak sauce as an experience as intense and enjoyable as the music itself for younger consumers.

More recently, Samyang has tied Buldak to content aimed at global millennials and Generation Z. The company collaborated with an American media platform to release a dating show called “Heat Match,” where contestants bond while trying the instant noodle's spicy flavor. Music video for “Hotter Than My EX,” a song released by K-pop boy band BoyNextDoor in collaboration with Samyang Foods, has already surpassed 100 million views in just two months on Tuesday.

“Buldak is a brand that earned global recognition with different challenges, so we value the emotional engagement with consumers,” a Samyang Foods spokesperson said. “Our ultimate goal is to make the brand part of consumers’ daily rituals by building up emotional experiences over time.”

The more surprising number in Samyang’s success story may not be the 3 trillion won revenue, but its profitability. The company is expected to post 683.1 billion won in sales and 160.5 billion won in operating profit in the first quarter alone, according to securities industry estimates on Thursday. That would put its operating margin at 23 percent.

That figure stands out even more when compared to the rest of the industry. Major Korean food companies that have already surpassed 3 trillion won in revenue typically post operating margins of 3 percent to 7 percent. Even Samyang’s ramyeon-sector rivals usually remain in the 5 percent to 6 percent range, making the Buldak maker's margin more than three times higher.

The different flavors of Buldak Ramen instant noodles [SAMYANG FOODS]

The secret sauce to Samyang's recent success is in the company's simple one-brand strategy. Focusing on Buldak simplifies production lines, raises utilization rates and lowers unit costs. Marketing also became more efficient because, especially in the early years, consumers themselves uploaded challenge videos and spread the brand without requiring large advertising budgets. A strong brand lowers selling and administrative costs and reduces production costs.

Samyang’s operating margin in the 20 percent range is therefore not simply the result of good marketing, but of a business structure created by brand concentration.

The company also sells 80.1 percent of its products outside Korea, with sales in North America and Europe accounting for more than 30 percent of the revenue.

With more than 80 percent of sales settled in foreign currencies like the dollar, Samyang enjoys a structural advantage stemming from the dollar's strength relative to the won.

But that same structure also carries risk. About 80 percent of total sales are still concentrated in the single Buldak brand. High dependence on Buldak has long been cited as one of Samyang Foods’ vulnerabilities. That is why the company has recently accelerated category expansion into products such as Buldak sauce and Buldak snacks.

Buldak Ramen's mascot is seen in New York in 2024 during the company's pop-up event. [SAMYANG ROUNDSQUARE]

Rather than launching entirely new brands, Samyang has chosen to widen categories under the Buldak umbrella. It is less a dilution of the brand than an expansion of the Buldak ecosystem.

The next challenge for Samyang is whether the formula that made Buldak a game changer in the global food market can be repeated in other categories. The company may prove to be not a one-hit wonder, but a model for how one powerful brand can create an entirely new market.

“We need to focus even more on what it already does best so thoroughly that no competitor could catch up,” the Samyang vice president said in her 2025 New Year's message.

“Samyang would strengthen its global network and production capacity through higher output, expansion into overseas factories and localized production.”

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 YOO JI-YOEN [[email protected]]