Dalgona Before Squid Game

If you watched Squid Game, you probably remember the sheer terror of the honeycomb challenge. But for those of us who grew up with Korean roots, watching that scene was a bizarre, whiplash-inducing experience. Before it was a deadly Netflix plot device, dalgona (or ppopgi, depending on where your parents grew up) was just the sticky, slightly burnt smell of after-school freedom.

Let me paint the real picture for you. We weren't in a sterile, terrifying arena. We were usually squatting on tiny, neon-colored plastic stools outside the neighborhood munbanggu (the local stationery store). In front of us sat an ahjussi or ahjumma hovering over a small briquette stove (yeontan). They would stir a spoonful of sugar over the flame until it melted into a clear syrup, then vigorously whip in a pinch of baking soda. Like magic, the syrup would foam up into a golden, cloud-like puff before being flattened into a brittle disc and stamped with a star, umbrella, or heart.

The stakes were high, sure, but not Squid Game high. The grand prize for perfectly extracting the shape without breaking it wasn’t millions of won or your life—it was a free second dalgona. And to win, Korean kids employed methods that would make modern health inspectors faint. We aggressively licked the sugar to melt the edges. We used the safety pins detached from our school name tags to chip away at the fragile candy, our tiny hands shaking with the kind of intense focus usually reserved for defusing a bomb.

To understand dalgona is to understand a specific era of South Korea's history. Emerging from the Korean War in the 1950s and 60s, the country was devastated. Refined sugar was an expensive luxury. Dalgona started as a cheap, accessible street food made from glucose blocks, eventually evolving into the sugar-and-baking-soda treat we know today. It was a testament to how people could create joy and sweetness out of absolute scarcity.

For the Korean diaspora, seeing this humble, slightly unhygienic, deeply nostalgic childhood staple become a global sensation is both amusing and touching. My non-Korean friends now buy dalgona kits online, complete with pristine tin boxes and sterilized needles. It’s a fun party game for them, but for us, it’s a time machine.

The next time you see a dalgona, forget the men in pink jumpsuits. Instead, imagine the crisp autumn air in 1980s Seoul, the chatter of children let out of school, the rich smell of caramelized sugar on a briquette fire, and a kid desperately licking a sugar star just to get one more taste of sweetness. That is the real magic of dalgona.