Short answer: no, they’re not the same thing. Dalgona candy is a Korean street snack that goes back to the 1960s. Dalgona coffee is a whipped drink invented at a cafe in Macau in 1997, and it only borrowed the Korean name in January 2020. Same word, two completely unrelated histories.
I found that out the hard way. Back in 2020, right when whipped coffee was blowing up on every foreign friend’s Instagram, a US-based coworker asked me about it on a video call, and I told her, with total confidence, that dalgona coffee was “an old Korean drink.” I was half right and mostly wrong — the name is Korean, the drink is not — and it took me embarrassingly long to actually look into where it came from. Once I did, I realized most of what’s written about “dalgona” online still doesn’t separate the candy from the coffee cleanly. So here’s the table I wish I’d had in 2020.
Dalgona Candy vs. Dalgona Coffee: The Quick Comparison
Lay the two side by side and the confusion starts to make a strange kind of sense. One Korean word, two products invented roughly sixty years and a few thousand kilometers apart, encountered by most of the world in the wrong order — coffee first, in 2020, candy a year later.
| Dalgona Candy | “Dalgona” Coffee | |
|---|---|---|
| Invented where | Korea (commonly traced to Busan) | Macau, at a cafe called Hon Kee |
| Invented when | Around the 1960s | 1997 |
| Named “dalgona” by whom | Its own Korean name from the start | Actor Jung Il-woo, on Korean TV, January 2020 |
| What it’s made of | Melted sugar and a pinch of baking soda, stamped flat and cooled | Instant coffee, sugar, and hot water, whipped into stiff foam over milk |
| Shares with the other | Nothing but the word “dalgona” | Nothing but the word “dalgona” |
| Went globally viral | September 2021, via Squid Game | 2020, via TikTok during COVID-19 lockdowns |
| In the Oxford English Dictionary | Yes — added December 2024 | Yes — added December 2024, same update, separate entry |
What Dalgona Candy Actually Is (And Why We Called It Ppopgi)
The candy itself is simple: a street vendor melts sugar in a small ladle over a portable burner, stirs in a pinch of baking soda so it foams and puffs up light and golden, then pours it flat onto a metal surface and stamps a shape into it — a star, an umbrella, a heart — before it cools solid. It’s believed to date to the 1960s, commonly traced to Busan, and for most of the 1970s and 80s you’d find vendors set up outside elementary schools all over the country, selling them for pocket change.
Here’s the part almost nobody outside Korea knows: the candy is called dalgona (달고나, the toffee’s own Korean name), but growing up, almost nobody at my school gate actually called it that. We called it ppopgi (뽑기, literally “picking” or “pulling out”) — which, technically, is the name of the game you play with it, not the candy itself. The rule was simple and a little cruel. You get a pin or a needle warmed over a lighter, and you try to carve the stamped shape out of the disc without cracking it. Pull it off clean, and the vendor hands you a second one free. Break it, and you’d already eaten the one you had — that was the whole transaction. Ask most Koreans my parents’ age or mine what they used to do outside school, and “ppopgi” comes out before “dalgona” almost every time. The game absorbed the candy’s name in everyday speech, even though they’re technically two different words for two different things.
So Where Did Dalgona Coffee Really Come From?
Not Korea — that’s the short version. The drink traces back to a cafe in Macau called Hon Kee, where the owner, Leong Kam Hon, reportedly first whipped up a version of it for a customer’s request back in 1997. It sits in a longer lineage of South Asian “beaten coffee” traditions from India and Pakistan, made by whisking instant coffee, sugar, and a little hot water until it turns into a stiff, pale foam, then spooning that over hot or cold milk. Notice what’s missing: no melted sugar, no baking soda, no stamping, no cooling into a solid shape. It shares zero ingredients with the candy. The resemblance starts and ends with color and texture — both are a light caramel-brown, and both look, from a distance, vaguely like something you’d want to lick off a spoon.
The Korean name only entered the picture in January 2020, when the actor Jung Il-woo visited that same Macau cafe while filming a segment for the Korean variety show “Stars’ Top Recipe at Fun-Staurant.” He tried the whipped drink on camera and, off the cuff, said the foam on top reminded him of the childhood candy. The nickname stuck in Korea almost immediately, and then jumped overseas later that year once TikTok picked it up — right as COVID-19 lockdowns had everyone stuck at home with nothing but instant coffee, sugar, and time to kill, whisking it by hand a few hundred times for a video.
How Squid Game Brought the Candy Back — and Oxford Made Both Official
In September 2021, Squid Game’s global release on Netflix turned the actual candy — not the coffee — into a worldwide phenomenon through the Episode 3 carving challenge, where contestants had to extract a stamped shape without breaking it, with considerably higher stakes than a free second candy. That’s probably when a huge new wave of viewers outside Korea encountered the word “dalgona” for the very first time as a game, not a drink, a full year and a half after the coffee had already gone viral under the same name.
Then, in December 2024, the Oxford English Dictionary made it official — and it turned out to be a two-for-one. That quarter’s update added “dalgona” as an English loanword for the honeycomb-toffee street candy, and it added “dalgona coffee” as a separate entry for the whipped drink, on the same day. It’s a strange kind of split fame: the coffee got international attention first, by nearly two years, and is probably still the more commonly searched term outside Korea, but by the time Oxford caught up, both words landed in the dictionary together.
What a Real Dalgona Costs in Seoul Right Now
During the 2021 Squid Game boom, some vendors in Insadong (인사동, a historic crafts-and-tea-house district in central Seoul popular with tourists) were reported charging as much as ₩7,000 for a single dalgona, versus roughly ₩2,000 at an ordinary vendor elsewhere in the city, like around Daehangno (대학로, “university street,” a theater district). Local media at the time covered the gap critically, close to calling it “Squid Game inflation” — a decades-old ₩2,000 snack suddenly worth more than three times as much the moment a global show made it recognizable, purely because tourists now knew the name and would pay for it.
I haven’t gone hunting for it in Insadong myself lately. What I actually run into these days is dalgona at neighborhood festivals and the odd traditional-market stall, priced much closer to that old ₩2,000 range, no line, no one filming it for a travel vlog. If you’re chasing “the real dalgona” on a Seoul trip, that’s the version worth finding — not the souvenir-priced stalls in the most photographed corners of the most photographed neighborhood.
The Coworker I Misled in 2020 — and My Kid’s Festival Stall
This isn’t even the first time I’ve had to walk back something I told a coworker about Korean food. A few weeks ago it was an inflated Scoville number on Buldak fire noodles; this time it’s a coffee that turns out not to be Korean at all. I’m starting to think I’ve become the office’s unofficial mythbuster, and not always on purpose.
Last month I watched my own kid try ppopgi for the first time at a summer festival stall, needle in hand, tongue out in concentration, and break the star shape clean in half on the first attempt — the same disappointment probably every Korean kid before them has felt at that exact stall setup. It’s a strange kind of generational loop. Squid Game turned ppopgi into a life-or-death nostalgia trip for audiences who’d never heard of it, but at an actual festival stall on a random weekend, it’s still just a five-minute game with a decent shot at a free candy if your hands are steadier than mine ever were.
If it’s the coffee you’re actually after, don’t bother hunting down a special cafe for it — it’s just instant coffee, sugar, and hot water, whisked stiff at home. No trip to Macau or Seoul required, and honestly no trip to a cafe either.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is dalgona coffee actually Korean?
No. It was invented at a cafe called Hon Kee in Macau in 1997. Only the name is Korean — Korean actor Jung Il-woo coined the nickname on TV in January 2020 after visiting that same cafe.
What is dalgona candy made of?
Melted sugar and a pinch of baking soda, poured flat and stamped with a shape while it’s still warm, then cooled solid. It shares no ingredients with dalgona coffee.
What’s the difference between dalgona and ppopgi?
Dalgona (달고나) is the candy itself. Ppopgi (뽑기) is the game of carving the stamped shape out without breaking it. Koreans of the vendor-candy generation usually say “ppopgi” for the whole activity, even though technically it’s a different word from the candy’s name.
Why did the Oxford English Dictionary add “dalgona”?
In its December 2024 quarterly update, following the worldwide attention Squid Game brought to the carving challenge in September 2021. That same update also added “dalgona coffee” as a separate entry — both words made the dictionary side by side.
How much does dalgona candy cost in Seoul today?
An ordinary vendor away from major tourist spots typically charges around ₩2,000. During the 2021 Squid Game boom, some Insadong vendors were reported charging as much as ₩7,000 for the same candy.