"Who Makes Jeon? Just Buy It"... The New Trend of Chuseok These Days

Emart Sees 66% Increase in Holiday Ready Meal Sales
Easy Cooking with Microwave and More
Prepare Charyesang for Under 100,000 Won

A customer is purchasing Chuseok ready meals at Emart Seongsu branch in Seongdong-gu, Seoul.

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Chun-han] Housewife Park Young-sun purchased jeon (Korean pancakes) as a convenience food for this Chuseok ancestral rite table. With prices soaring sky-high and the daunting task of preparing labor-intensive holiday dishes alone, she decided to buy ready-made food. Park said, “Since my daughter got married, preparing food alone has been very difficult,” adding, “Now that I’m getting older and my health isn’t good, I decided to keep it simple.”

Recently, as the culture of Chuseok ancestral rites has simplified, more people are seeking convenient ceremonial food products. They are easy to prepare by simply reheating in a microwave or air fryer, or lightly pan-frying, and are also cheaper than preparing everything from scratch.

According to Emart on the 8th, sales of holiday convenience foods from the 1st to the 6th of this month increased by 66% compared to last year’s Chuseok. Emart sells products such as mos leaf songpyeon, assorted jeon, Soonhee’s Bindaetteok, large-pack tteokgalbi, and five-color festive japchae through its convenient home meal brand Peacock. In the ready-to-cook food section, customers can also purchase bracken, bellflower root, radish namul, spinach, mung bean sprouts, and soybean sprouts. Using these products, one can easily prepare a Chuseok ancestral rite table for under 100,000 won.

At Lotte Mart, sales of Chuseok convenience foods surged 90% compared to last year. Lotte Mart offers bite-sized tteokgalbi, traditional Korean japchae, donggeurangttaeng, and frozen pollack jeon through its private brand Yori-hada, and sells assorted jeon, assorted namul, and songpyeon in the ready-to-cook food section. Homeplus also saw a 65% increase in Chuseok convenience food sales. Top-selling products included CJ Bibigo donggeurangttaeng, Homeplus Signature five-color songpyeon, and Dongwon Yangban canned meatballs.

Online malls are also seeing an increase in demand for Chuseok convenience foods. Market Kurly’s holiday table set sales rose 58% year-on-year. At SSG.com, sales of convenience foods and seasoned/smoked meats grew by 27% and 48%, respectively. During the same period, Lotte On’s refrigerated convenience meals and frozen meal kits more than doubled in sales, and Gmarket saw increases in sales of donggeurangttaeng (193%), fried and assorted jeon (93%), meal kits (65%), and songpyeon (13%). At 11st, sales of donggeurangttaeng and jeon increased by 101% compared to the previous week.

An industry insider said, “This Chuseok, due to high inflation and the short holiday period, many people want to purchase only as much convenience food as they need,” adding, “Using convenience food cooking products can save both cost and time.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.