Korean Kitchen Scissors: Why Koreans Cut Meat and Noodles at the Table, and Why It Is Not an Office Scissor

A foreign visitor's first Korean barbecue has a moment that nobody warns them about. The meat goes on the grill, and then a server — or the youngest person at the table — picks up a pair of scissors and starts cutting it.

Not a knife. Scissors. Big ones, held over the fire, snipping galbi off the bone and pork belly into bite-sized squares. A Korea Times columnist once quoted a visitor calling them "an assault weapon on the table." On TikTok the reaction videos run into the millions: they cut steak with scissors?

Koreans do not see any of this. To a Korean, scissors at the table are as unremarkable as a fork, and the interesting thing is on the other side: the tool they are holding is not the scissor you have in your desk drawer. It is a purpose-built kitchen instrument that Korean manufacturers have refined for fifty years, it costs ₩3,000 at Daiso, and once you have used one on a chicken you will not go back to the knife. This guide is about that object — where it came from, what makes it different, how to use it without embarrassing yourself, and which one to buy.

The Korean-made one, if you want the real thing at home — Peace K-305 kitchen scissors, on AmazonAffiliate link. As an Amazon Associate, EpicKor earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.

Quick Guide

What you are actually seeing

The reason the scissors look wrong to a visitor is that most of the world separates cutting from eating. Meat is cut in the kitchen, by a cook, with a knife, on a board, and arrives on the plate in pieces. At a Korean table none of those conditions hold.

• The food is cooked in front of you, on a grill in the middle of the table, and it goes on whole: a rack of 갈비, a slab of 삼겹살, a whole squid.
• It is shared. One person cuts for five, and everyone eats from the same grill.
• There is no knife at a Korean place setting. Spoon and chopsticks, nothing else. There never was.
• Some of the food cannot be bitten through — Hamheung-style starch noodles, whole-leaf kimchi, a rack of ribs on the bone.

Put those together and a knife is the wrong tool: you would need a board, both hands, and to stand up. Scissors cut a hot rib off the bone in one motion, from a seat, one-handed, over the grill, without touching the meat. The tongs hold; the scissors cut; the pieces go back on the heat. It is a two-tool system, and once you have watched a server clear a whole rack of galbi in about fifteen seconds you understand why nobody in Korea thinks about it.

The Korea Times column had the origin right: the practice began at naengmyeon restaurants in the 1970s, because the potato-starch noodles of the Hamheung style cannot be broken with teeth and cannot be twirled — our guide to why foreigners never learn to love that dish is largely a guide to those noodles. Galbi houses picked it up by the early 1980s. By the time of the column it was, in the writer's words, "almost impossible to find any Korean restaurant which does not serve with scissors."

It is not an office scissor

This is the part visitors get wrong even after they have accepted the idea. They see "scissors" and picture the thing in the desk drawer. The Korean kitchen scissor, 주방가위, is a different object, and the differences are exactly the ones that matter at a grill.

The serration is the tell. Pick up a Korean kitchen scissor and run your thumb along one blade: it is toothed. That single edge is why a hot, oiled slab of pork belly stays put between the blades instead of squirting out sideways, which is what happens with the office pair, and which is why the office pair is genuinely dangerous over a grill.

The detachable pivot is the second tell, and the reason Koreans wash their scissors in the dishwasher and you probably do not. A riveted scissor cannot be cleaned where it needs cleaning most. A Korean pair splits into two halves, each of which is just a blade with a handle.

The hygiene argument Korea already had

If your instinct on seeing the scissors was is that clean?, Korea had the same instinct forty years ago, loudly.

In June 1985, with the Seoul Asian Games and the 1988 Olympics approaching, the 조선일보 ran an appeal for a better-designed barbecue scissor, arguing that galbi and naengmyeon — the two dishes Korea intended to show the world — looked "chilling and unhygienic" because of the "serving scissors" that came with them. A month later the 동아일보 reported that cold noodles at famous restaurants carried excessive E. coli, and named the naengmyeon scissors among the causes, alongside the broth vats and the ice.

The response was not to remove the scissors. It was to fix them. Restaurant scissors became stainless, detachable and dedicated to food; Korea's Food Sanitation Act now requires cooking tools — boards, knives, scissors — to be sterilised before use, and forbids using a tool that touched raw food on cooked food. Walk into a galbi house today and look behind the counter: the tongs and scissors are usually standing in a UV sterilising cabinet, the glass-fronted box with the blue light, and a fresh pair comes to your table with each new order of meat.

So the answer to is that clean? is: cleaner than the knife-and-board most kitchens use, because it was argued about in public and regulated as a result.

What Koreans cut with them

Once the scissors are on the table, they do not stop at meat. In roughly descending order of how often you will see it:

1. 갈비 (galbi). The classic. Marinated ribs come to the grill on the bone in one long strip; the server cuts along the bone, then across, so each piece is a mouthful with a corner of bone to hold. This is the cut that made the scissors famous.
2. 삼겹살 (pork belly). Long strips go on whole, are turned once, then cut into squares on the grill so the fat renders on the cut faces. Cut too early and the meat steams; too late and it chars. The person with the scissors is doing real work.
3. 냉면 (cold noodles). The bowl arrives and the server asks 잘라드릴까요? — shall I cut them? Two snips, across. In Hamheung-style bowls it is close to mandatory; in Pyongyang-style bowls purists refuse, and that argument is a whole subculture on its own — see our naengmyeon ordering guide.
4. 김치. Whole-leaf kimchi is cut into strips at the table, in the dish, with scissors. At home this is the single most common use.
5. Seafood. Grilled squid, octopus, whole fish, crab: scissors through the shell, scissors through the tentacle.
6. 전 (pan-fried batter dishes), pizza, fried chicken, 대파. Anything that arrives as one piece and needs to become several. Korean pizza chains hand you scissors. Fried chicken shops sometimes pre-cut with them.

There is a household version of the same logic: most Korean kitchens own two or three pairs, and a Korean cook reaches for scissors before a knife for spring onions, chilli, dried anchovies, packet noodles, and the corner of every plastic bag.

How to use them without looking lost

• Do not reach for them first. If staff are cooking for you, the scissors are theirs. If the table is cooking, the host or the youngest person cuts. A guest who grabs the scissors is taking a job that is not theirs, which is a small thing, but it is noticed.
• Cut on the grill, not on the plate. The meat is cut where it cooks, so the cut faces sear. Lifting a piece to a plate to cut it is the foreign tell.
• Hold with the tongs, cut with the scissors. Two hands, two tools. Never scissors alone over a hot grill.
• Ask before you cut shared noodles. 잘라도 될까요? (jallado doelkkayo? — may I cut?) Some people want theirs whole.
• Do not cut above someone else's bowl, and put the scissors down between uses rather than gesturing with them. The "assault weapon" reaction is really about people waving them around.
• They are not personal. The pair on the table is for the food. Do not use it to open a wrapper from your bag.

Which one to buy

If you want to take the habit home, the good news is that the Korean pair is cheap, and that the brands Korean restaurants use are the same ones Koreans buy for the house.

The honest counter-information, because the cheap pair is very cheap: a ₩3,000 one-piece scissor will rust at the pivot if you leave it wet, and it will loosen after a year of ribs. A detachable pair costs three times as much and is the one Koreans actually keep. If you only buy one, buy detachable; if you are buying for a trip and will use it on one barbecue, the Daiso pair is fine and fits in a suitcase.

And a practical note on flying: scissors under about 6 cm of blade are allowed in cabin baggage on most airlines, and no kitchen scissor is that short. Check them. The same rule catches the Korean nail-clipper gift set — our guide to that explains the airport logic.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why do Koreans use scissors to cut food?

Because Korean meals are cooked and shared at the table, on a grill, with no knife at the place setting. Scissors cut a hot rib off the bone in one motion, from a seat, one-handed, without a board — and some Korean foods, like Hamheung-style cold noodles and whole-leaf kimchi, cannot be bitten through at all. The practice began at cold-noodle restaurants in the 1970s and spread to barbecue houses in the 1980s.

Q: Are Korean kitchen scissors different from normal scissors?

Yes. A 주방가위 has thick food-grade stainless blades, one serrated edge that grips slippery meat, large rubber-lined rings that work from either hand, often a bone notch and bottle opener, and in the better pairs a pivot that comes apart so the whole thing can be washed. An office scissor has none of that and is unsafe over a grill.

Q: Is it hygienic to cut food with scissors in a restaurant?

Korea argued about exactly this before the 1988 Olympics, when newspapers called the serving scissors unhygienic and linked them to E. coli in cold noodles. The fix was stainless, detachable, food-only scissors and a legal requirement to sterilise cutting tools; most barbecue restaurants now keep scissors and tongs in a UV cabinet and bring a fresh pair with each order.

Q: Who is supposed to cut the meat at Korean barbecue?

Staff, if they are tending the grill. Otherwise the host or the youngest person at the table. As a guest, do not reach for the scissors first; if they are handed to you, hold the meat with the tongs and cut on the grill, not on a plate.

Q: How much do Korean kitchen scissors cost?

Daiso sells a large one-piece pair for ₩3,000; the restaurant-standard 오복 No.104 is about ₩5,500 at kitchen-supply shops; detachable premium pairs from Korean brands run ₩10,000–20,000. Korean-made pairs such as the Peace K-305 are sold on Amazon.

Q: Can I take Korean kitchen scissors on a plane?

In checked baggage, yes. Kitchen scissors exceed the short-blade limit that most airlines allow in the cabin, so pack them in the hold — the same rule that catches Korean nail-clipper gift sets.

Bottom Line

The scissors on a Korean table are not a shortcut or a quirk. They are the right tool for food that is cooked whole, shared, and eaten from a grill without a knife, and Korea spent forty years — including one public hygiene fight before the Olympics — turning them into a purpose-built instrument: thick, serrated, detachable, sterilised.

Watch how the server does it: tongs in one hand, scissors in the other, cut on the fire. Then buy the ₩3,000 pair at Daiso, or the Korean-made one at home, and cut your next chicken with it. You will understand the table in about fifteen seconds.

Sources

• The Korea Times, "Scissors dancing on dining table" (opinion, July 2015) — scissors first used at naengmyeon restaurants in the 1970s; foreign reaction quoted ("an assault weapon on the table"); near-universal use today.
• 조선일보, 11 June 1985 — appeal for a better barbecue scissor ahead of the 1986 Asian Games and 1988 Olympics; galbi and naengmyeon described as looking unhygienic because of serving scissors. 동아일보, 30 July 1985 — E. coli in cold noodles at well-known restaurants, with the naengmyeon scissors named among the causes. Both as archived in the Naver News Library and cited in Korean reference summaries of the dish.
• 식품위생법 시행규칙, 식품접객업 영업자 준수사항 — cutting boards, knives, scissors and other cooking tools to be sterilised before use; tools used on raw food not to be used on cooked food.
• 다이소몰, 대형 주방 가위 — ₩3,000; serrated tip, one-piece construction; customer rating 4.6 (about 200 reviews), checked September 2026.
• NW Kitchen (업소용 주방용품), 오복가위 No.104 / No.803 — ₩5,300 one-handed, ₩5,500 two-handed; 255 mm, checked September 2026.
• 피스코리아 (Peace Korea) — Korean scissors manufacturer; K-305 kitchen scissors sold on Amazon as Made in Korea.
• 위키트리, "외국인들이 한국 식당 방문해 가장 충격받는다는 의외의 '이 물건'" (2025) — foreign reactions and the shift to buying Korean scissors as souvenirs.