Andong Jjimdak has a very interesting t to it. It doesn't have a 500-year history. It wasn't a dish served to the kings. It wasn't made it was a healthy dish or had magical curative properties. This dish was made because people wanted to make money and to use up surplus supplies of chicken. Pure and simple.
During the 1980's fried chicken was all the rage and everyone wanted to get a taste. The people in the city of Andong had to come up with something new because the process of frying chicken was expensive and the dish didn't go well with a bowl of rice- an essential part of every Korean meal. Andong is a city known for their chickens and the cooks at the traditional markets had to come up with something new.
One of the cooks started to make a thick and caramelly sauce to flavor the chicken. Others started cooking their chickens at very high heat so it would be tender. Another added potatoes, carrots and onions to the sauce. Another added some oriental herbs like licorice, yellow root, and cinnamon. Finally a chef came up the idea to add some clear and chewy sweet potato noodles. Another added spicy red chilies. Over time the sauce improved and so did the cooking techniques and the original Andong-style chicken came into existence. The city of Andong had their answer to fried chicken and it was good.

Koreans flocked to the traditional market to get a taste. Each shop had something similar but unique. Soon this dish started to spread to other parts of Korea such as Seoul, Daegu, and Busan. As it spread, the flavor of the dish changed again- becoming less herbaceous. Franchise Jjimdak restaurants started popping up and soon there were seafood, pork and beef options. Also some places found that the delicious sauce needed other ways of soaking it up so they started making fried rice with the leftovers. Others offered scorched crispy rice called nurunji to be added after the meal.

This dish, one of Korea's first modern dishes, became a big hit and it was simply how to combat the popularity of fried chicken. Now there are even Andong Jjimdak restaurants in other countries such as in China and Singapore.

Now if you go to Andong, you can still get the original flavor of the dish. Here the flavors haven't changed. However, in other parts of Korea, the sauce seems to have gotten thicker, sweeter and spicier. You should take a trip to Andong and the chicken market to see how it all got started. Oh, at the market you can get fried chicken as well but this fried chicken is usually topped with heaps of roasted garlic.