Comedian Yoo Jae-suk poses in a commercial for Nongshim's spicy noodles, "Bae Hongdong Bibimmeyon," last year. Courtesy of Nongshim

By Kimi Jae-heun

Competition is heating up over the rapidly growing spicy noodles market as Nongshim, Ottogi and Samyang Foods are preparing to challenge the No. 1 player, Paldo, this coming summer, according to company officials, Monday.

According to the Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation, Monday, the local spicy noodle market has been growing by 10 percent annually for the last decade. In 2014, its size reached 67.3 billion won, which more than doubled to 150 billion won in 2021.

Paldo has been dominating the market for the past 38 years, since the launch of its best-selling "Paldo Bibimmeyon" in 1984. It once enjoyed a market share of over 60 percent, but the latecomers have introduced similar instant noodles with a sweet and spicy sauce that brought the figure down to the 50-percent range.

Nongshim has a big dream to challenge Paldo this year.

Although, it only holds 20 percent of the market share currently, its spicy noodles, "Bae Hongdong Bibimmyeon," introduced last year, sold over 34 million packs. Nongshim achieved 20 billion won ($16.14 million) of sales only with Bae Hongdong Bibimmyeon in 2021, which helped the noodle maker beat Ottogi and become the No. 2 player. It also hired Yoo Jae-suk, the most popular comedian and television show host in the country, as a commercial model for the instant noodles.

"Yoo played a huge role in advertising our Bae Hongdong Bibimmyeon a lot last year. This year, he will be our commercial model again with a new concept to keep promoting the product item," a Nongshim official said.

Paldo Bibimmyeon / Courtesy of Paldo

Ottogi plans to reclaim its original position from Nongshim with its renewed "Jin Bibimmeyon," which will be out this month. It is considering adding more ingredients like pears, radish and plums to the sauce to make the flavor richer, while increasing the noodle amount by 20 percent upon the request of its customers.

"We have upgraded our Jin Bibimmyeon just a little bit and it will be out on the market soon. We have not chosen our commercial model yet but a new one is coming soon too," an Ottogi official said.