Jagalchi Fish Market – Busan, South Korea

The largest fish market in South Korea, Jalgachi Market is a massive, bustling market place with stalls galore, restuarants, and an insane amount and variety of seafood.

There are two large buildings housing aisle after aisle of tanks / bins of various live seafood. You can buy any of the live seafood from one of these seafood stalls and then go upstairs to a correlating restuarant (each stall has a restuarant upstairs) and they will prepare the seafood for you. There’s so many different types of live fish, sea crustaceans, squid, crabs, octopus, it’s really mind boggling.

The entire surrounding area is very similar to what is housed within these buildings with shop after shop having an abundance of live seafood that can be purchased and then prepared / eaten all at the same spot.

After walking through one of the buildings and being amazed by the sheer volume of stalls and endless aisles of aquatic tanks and bins filled with quite the assortment of aquatic wildlife, I decided that I had zero idea of what most of these creatures were, let alone how they would be prepared and what it would taste like, I wandered upstairs to where the restuarants were located to make things less complicated on myself.

I was quickly flagged down by one of the first restaurant patrons that noticed me who asked what I was looking for. They had a large fish tank with a few species of fish in it and the patron went over what kind of fish they were and how much they cost. They were fairly good sized fish. I really had no idea what they were or what they would taste like but chose one of them and got half of it sashimi style and the other half grilled.

This came with the usual side dishes that accompany pretty much all South Korean meals, kimchi, radish, etc. It also came with a few massive shrimps that were incredibly sweet.

The fish I ended up getting didn’t turn out well sashimi style. Very rubbery and chewy it wasn’t very enjoyable. I’m used to sashimi that melts in your mouth and this was certainly not that type.

The grilled fish on the other hand was very good. Freshly grilled and salted the fish was moist and had great char taste. All in all it was a ton of food that definitely left me quite full.

Walking around Jalgachi market and seeing all the different types of seafood in the market, then being able to eat such fresh fish was certainly a memorable experience. If ever visiting Busan it’s certainly a place to check out since it’s such a busy area with a lot going on!