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Gumi, South Korea
On the ground of Nongshim’s noodle factory within the metropolis of Gumi, there’s an industrial symphony enjoying out: the grinding of wheat flour and rattle of rollers provides solution to the rhythmic swish of blades on dough; ribbons of contemporary noodles are steamed with a hiss, flash-fried with a crackle, then whisked away within the blink of a watch on an ever-humming conveyor belt, and packaged into crinkling plastic.
Every minute, 600 packs of ramyeon — Korean instant noodles, often known as ramyun and ramen — roll off the extremely automated, ultra-fast manufacturing traces into containers carried to the loading bay by robots.
This 42,266‑sq.‑meter (454,947 sq. toes) facility is South Korea’s largest instant noodle factory, churning out 6 million packets per day.
“Last year, we produced 1.23 billion units, worth 884 billion won ($598 million),” says factory supervisor Sang Hoon Kim.
The Gumi plant makes 80% of the Shin Ramyun and 90% of the Chapagetti (thick and chewy spaghetti-like noodles with black soybean paste) offered domestically with simply 600 employees. That’s made potential by a collection of AI-enhanced sensors and sensible cameras that monitor each level of manufacturing, guaranteeing security and high quality, says Kim, including that know-how is developed in-house by employees which have “extensive knowledge of ramyeon-making.”
But in Gumi, ramyeon is greater than only a meals: the factory and its merchandise have develop into the town’s cultural anchor.
Around 270 kilometers (168 miles) southeast of South Korea’s capital, Gumi is a mid-tier metropolis with roughly 400,000 residents and a protracted historical past as an industrial hub — first recognized for textiles, then electronics, and as we speak, because the nation’s largest communications know-how middle.
It’s not often frequented by vacationers; however that’s altering.
In 2022, Gumi put the highlight on its noodle manufacturing, launching the inaugural “ramyeon festival” the identical yr.
The objective, says Jeong-tae Kim — a senior official at Gumi City Hall and the lead competition organizer — was to remodel Gumi’s fame as a “boring” industrial metropolis right into a “fun” vacation spot for residents and vacationers alike.
“As an industrial city, we needed a cultural identity,” says Jeong-tae Kim.
The metropolis corridor approached Nongshim, and it partnered with the council on the competition, which has grown yearly: from simply 10,000 guests in its first version to a document 350,000 in 2025, promoting 54,000 bowls and 480,000 packets of ramyeon throughout the three-day occasion.
The competition’s spotlight is a 475-meter (1,558-foot) pedestrianized strip of distributors that the organizers consult with as “the world’s longest ramen restaurant.” Here, dozens of eating places and cooks serve up ramen and ramen-inspired dishes, from ramen sandwiches to Asado smoked pork noodle soup.
Vendors are supplied with noodles from the Nongshim factory. “Freshly fried ramen is incredibly delicious,” says factory supervisor Sang Hoon Kim, including that seeing vacationers pour into Gumi “has given us a great sense of pride.”
On competition weekends, practice tickets from the close by metropolis of Daegu promote out and native distributors report a surge of gross sales, says Jeong-tae Kim. The problem now, he says, is stretching the advantages past a single weekend.
Instant noodles got here to South Korea within the Nineteen Sixties, when the nation was nonetheless recovering from the Korean War: there have been meals shortages and the nation’s staple, rice, was restricted. So, folks started making noodles with wheat flour offered by the US military, which was actively promoted by the federal government within the Nineteen Sixties.
Samyang Foods, the model behind the fiery sizzling “Buldak Ramen,” turned Korea’s first instant noodle producer in 1963, taking inspiration from the Japanese-style of instant noodles developed by Nissin founder Momofuko Ando in 1958, however tailored for Korean tastes: the hen broth was switched to beef, and pink chili was added. Nongshim adopted in 1965, with different home manufacturers like Paldo and Ottogi launching within the Eighties.
Sang Hoon Kim remembers when Shin Ramyun was launched in 1986, whereas he was nonetheless in school. Filling and low-cost — it value 200 received, or 20 cents — it was the proper scholar meal.
“I ate a ton of it. I’d buy boxes of it,” recollects Sang Hoon Kim. “The most I ever ate in a day was 10 packs.” After graduating, he acquired a job with Nongshim in his residence metropolis, Busan, and moved to Gumi with the corporate in 1992, working his manner up from the manufacturing line to administration.
Three a long time on, he’s not uninterested in it: Even although he samples the ramyeon produced on the factory day by day, “on holidays, I’ll even cook it at home and eat it again,” he says.
Sang Hoon Kim just isn’t alone in his love of ramyeon: In 2025, Koreans ate greater than 4 billion servings of instant noodles, or roughly 77 bowls per particular person annually, in response to the World Instant Noodle Association.
Ramyeon’s recognition is hovering globally, too: Korea’s instant noodle exports grew 22% in 2025, value a document $1.5 billion.
Pop tradition moments — just like the “ram-don” scene in “Parasite” or the noodle-slurping second in “K-Pop Demon Hunters” — have boosted consciousness amongst worldwide customers about Korean ramen, though Jinny Seo, Nongshim’s world head of promoting, says these moments mirror decades-long campaigns to put it on the market to a wider market.
These moments have develop into a “catalyst” to additional broaden their client base, she says: For instance, Nongshim collaborated with Netflix on a line of “K-Pop Demon Hunter” noodle flavors impressed by the movie’s characters.
While Nongshim dominates the home market, competitor Samyang overtook it in abroad gross sales in 2024.
“We’re in a situation where buyers in places like Europe are demanding more products, but we can’t deliver,” says Seo. To meet this demand, Nongshim is constructing the 191.8 billion-won ($130 million) Noksan export-only factory in Busan, anticipated to provide 500 million ramyeon items yearly and almost double the corporate’s present home exports when it opens later this yr.
Will this shake Gumi’s title as Korea’s residence of ramyeon?
Seo doesn’t suppose so: Gumi, with its enormous output of Shin Ramyun, is the “core of Nongshim production.”
Sang Hoon Kim isn’t anxious both: a lot of the state-of-the-art know-how being put in within the Busan hub has been developed and examined in Gumi, serving to to unfold the town’s affect even additional afield.
Behind the extraordinary automation, each product retains a small human contact: Sang Hoon Kim picks up a packet of Shin Ramyun and factors to a few characters beneath the perfect‑earlier than date; it’s the title of the one that packed the noodles.
“Now, they print the name of the person doing the packaging,” says Kim. “But back when I was a field manager, my name was printed on it. If 500 million Shin Ramyun units were sold, it felt like everyone in the country knew my name.”