Korean Desserts Vocabulary: 30 Words with Romanization and Audio

Korean Desserts Vocabulary at a Glance

This list has 30 words in five groups of six. It begins with rice cakes and their occasions, moves to traditional sweets, then to shaved ice and ice cream, cafe desserts and everyday snacks. The page sits inside Korean Dishes, and it connects to the vocabulary for holidays, because many rice cakes belong to a festival.

Korean uses three words that English often merges: 디저트 (a dessert after a meal), 간식 (a snack between meals) and 과자 (a packaged snack such as chips or biscuits). The last group of this page sorts them out. Before that, the most useful habit is to link each rice cake to its occasion, because the occasion is what you will be asked about.

Which Dessert and Rice Cake Names Should You Learn First?

Learn 떡 (rice cake), 송편 (half-moon rice cake), 빙수 (shaved ice), 케이크 (cake) and 간식 (snack) first. They cover the traditional food of a festival, the dessert you meet in a cafe in summer, and the word for any small treat.

• Words to say. 떡, 빙수, 케이크, 과자. These are what you ask for in a shop.
• Words to recognise. 송편, 인절미, 약과, 팥빙수. They appear on traditional menus and cafe boards.
• Words about custom. 백설기, 찹쌀떡, 엿. They explain what people give at birthdays and before exams.

A traditional sweet shop is called a 떡집 (rice cake shop), and a modern one is a 카페 (cafe). Both sell what is on this list.

Word · 8

1. 1

   떡

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   tteok

   rice cake

2. 2

   송편

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   songpyeon

   half-moon rice cake

3. 3

   빙수

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   bingsu

   shaved ice

4. 4

   디저트

   Play

   dijeoteu

   dessert

5. 5

   케이크

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   keikeu

   cake

6. 6

   마카롱

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   makarong

   macaron

7. 7

   과자

   Play

   gwaja

   snack; biscuit

8. 8

   간식

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   gansik

   between-meal snack

Rice Cakes (떡)

떡 is the general word for rice cake, and it covers dozens of kinds. A 떡 is made by steaming or pounding rice flour, and it is often sweet or filled. Each kind belongs to an occasion. 송편 is the half-moon cake of the autumn harvest festival, and 백설기 is the white steamed cake served on a baby's first birthday. 인절미 is pounded sticky rice coated in soybean powder.

Example Sentences

Three frames cover most of the examples. The first is noun + 을/를 + verb, as in 떡을 먹어요 (I eat rice cake). The second is noun + 은/는 + adjective, as in 약과는 달아요 (honey cookies are sweet). The third is noun + 하나 주세요 (please give me one noun), as in 팥빙수 하나 주세요. Use the audio, then say each sentence aloud.

You will meet 떡 in the names of other dishes, such as 떡국 (rice cake soup) and 떡볶이 (spicy rice cakes), so the word is worth knowing well. For the soup, see the page on soups, and for the street dish, see street food.

Which Rice Cake Goes with Which Occasion?

Rice cakes are tied to moments in life. Knowing the occasion helps you remember the name and explains why a Korean friend might hand you one. The table lists five.

The last one is a custom rather than a rule. Students receive 찹쌀떡 or 엿 before a test because both are sticky, and 붙다 (to stick) also means to pass an exam. The holidays are explained on the holidays page and the Seollal and Chuseok page.

How Do You Say Traditional Sweets in Korean?

한과 (hangwa) is the group name for traditional Korean confections. They are made from grain flour, honey, ginger and nuts, and they were served at royal banquets, weddings and ancestral rites. Today they are sold in gift boxes and eaten with tea. 약과 is a fried honey cookie, 유과 is a puffed rice snack and 강정 is a puffed grain bar bound with syrup.

The words in this group are mostly Sino-Korean compounds. 한 (韓) means Korean, and 과 (菓) means sweets, so 한과 is literally Korean sweets. The other half of the family, 양과, is Western-style confectionery. You do not need the characters, but the pair explains the logic of the word.

Shaved Ice and Ice Cream

빙수 (bingsu) is shaved ice with toppings, the most popular cold dessert in summer. The classic version is 팥빙수, with sweet red beans (팥) on top of fine shaved ice. Modern cafes serve versions with fruit, cheese or 인절미 and soybean powder. The ice itself is 얼음, and the general word for ice cream is 아이스크림, a loanword.

A bowl of 빙수 is usually big enough to share, so two or three friends often order 하나 (one) and eat from it together. Cafes bring a spoon for each person, and you can ask for another with 숟가락 하나 더 주세요 (one more spoon, please).

How Do You Say Bakery and Cafe Desserts in Korean?

Cafe desserts are mostly loanwords. They are spelled in Hangul to match the sound of the foreign word, following the loanword rules of the National Institute of Korean Language (국립국어원). 디저트 is the word for dessert, 케이크 is cake and 쿠키 is cookie. 크로플, a croissant pressed in a waffle iron, is a recent cafe trend that spread widely in Korea and shows how new words appear.

A loanword is written with the letters that best match the sound, so the spelling can differ from the foreign one. The word 빵 (bread) came from Portuguese pão through Japanese, but it has been used for so long that most speakers no longer feel it as foreign. Treat the loanword spellings here as the standard forms and learn them as whole words.

Snacks

The last group is the small treats between meals. 간식 is a snack, and it is also the word for any small treat. 과자 is packaged snacks like chips or biscuits, and 사탕 is hard candy. 초콜릿 and 젤리 are common loanwords. 호두과자 is a walnut-shaped cake filled with sweet bean paste, sold hot from small stalls.

Do not confuse the three words that translate as snack or dessert. The table in the next section shows when each one is used. The short rule is that 디저트 follows a meal, 간식 comes between meals and 과자 is the packaged product.

What Is the Difference between 과자, 간식 and 디저트?

These three words overlap in English, but not in Korean. Use the table to choose the right one.

So you can say 간식으로 떡을 먹어요 (I eat rice cake as a snack), but you would not call it 과자.

How Do You Pronounce These Words?

Dessert names contain a few tense sounds and some final-consonant changes. Standard pronunciation follows the National Institute of Korean Language (국립국어원) rules, and the romanization on this page follows the Revised Romanization of Korean, which does not mark every sound change.

The doubled consonants in 빵 and 떡 are the sounds learners most often miss. They are tense, not aspirated. Compare 빵 (tense), 방 (plain) and 팡 (aspirated) with the slow audio.

Audio and Slow Playback

Every word and every example sentence has its own clip. The five clips below replay the trickiest words slowly. Play one, repeat it aloud, then play it again and compare.

What Mistakes Do Learners Make with Dessert and Rice Cake Names?

These five mistakes come up most often with dessert words.

1. Calling every sweet 떡. 떡 is a rice cake. A 약과 is a cookie, and a 빵 is bread.
2. Mixing up 간식 and 과자. 간식 is any snack, and 과자 is a packaged snack.
3. Saying 팥 with a final [ㅌ]. The final sound is [ㄷ] when nothing follows, so it is [팓].
4. Treating 송편 as an everyday sweet. Rice cake shops sell it all year, but it is the food of Chuseok, when families make it together.
5. Writing 케이크 as 께이크. The loanword spelling rules do not use tense letters such as ㄲ for these sounds, so cake is 케이크 with ㅋ.

Once you can say the occasion of each rice cake and the three snack words, you can order and talk about sweets with ease.

Practice: Flashcards and Worksheet

Study in three steps. First, run the flashcard deck in recognition mode until you recognise each of the 30 words. Second, switch to listening mode. Third, take the quiz. Your progress stays in your browser, and the vocabulary flashcard decks page lists the other decks.

A printable worksheet for these words (word list, matching, writing practice, fill-in-the-blank exercises and answer key) is available in A4 and US Letter from the download card on this page. For practice, copy the 30 words by hand and write the occasion beside each rice cake.

Where to Go Next

Korean desserts vocabulary links to the rest of the food section through 떡, which appears in savoury dishes too. After this page, continue with Korean Street Food Vocabulary, where rice cakes appear in tteokbokki, or Korean Noodles Vocabulary. To move up a level, return to Korean Dishes.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Do You Say Rice Cake in Korean?

A rice cake is 떡 (tteok). It is a group of foods made from steamed or pounded rice flour. Name the kind in front, as in 송편 (half-moon rice cake) or 인절미 (soy-powder rice cake). To ask for it, say 떡 주세요 (rice cake, please).

How Do You Say Dessert in Korean?

Dessert is 디저트 (dijeoteu), a loanword. A snack between meals is 간식 (gansik), and a packaged snack is 과자 (gwaja). Traditional sweets are 한과 (hangwa). Say 디저트는 뭐가 있어요? to ask what desserts are available. In cafes, the dessert menu often sits under the English heading Dessert.

What Is the Difference between Tteok and Hangwa?

떡 is a rice cake, steamed or pounded, soft and chewy. 한과 is the group of traditional sweets, such as honey cookies and puffed rice snacks, which are fried, pressed or syrup-bound. Both are traditional, and both are served on festival days.

Where Can I Practise Dessert Words with Flashcards?

Use the vocabulary flashcard decks. The deck for this page holds all 30 words with Hangul, romanization and audio, in recognition and listening modes. Your progress stays in your browser, so you can return daily and review the cards you missed.

Is the Romanization on This Page Official?

It follows the Revised Romanization of Korean, which South Korea adopted on 7 July 2000 and whose rules the National Institute of Korean Language (국립국어원) publishes. It is a learning aid and does not mark every sound change, so rely on the Hangul and the audio.

Is There a Printable Worksheet for Dessert Words?

A printable worksheet for these words (word list, matching, writing practice, fill-in-the-blank exercises and answer key) is available in A4 and US Letter from the download card on this page. For practice, copy the tables on this page by hand or use the flashcard deck, which carries the same 30 words.

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