Jajangmyeon

Jajangmyeon or jjajangmyeon (짜장면) is a Korean Chinese noodle dish topped with a thick sauce made of chunjang, diced pork, and vegetables. It originated in Incheon, Korea where Chinese migrant workers brought over zhajiangmian from Shandong in the late 19th century. Modifications in Korea such as a darker and sweeter sauce differentiate the Korean version from the Chinese dish. Variants of the dish use seafood, or other meats. Jajang (자장; alternatively spelled jjajang 짜장) is borrowed from the Chinese word zhájiàng (炸醬), which means "fried sauce". Myeon (면) means "noodles". The Chinese characters are pronounced jak (작; 炸) and jang (장; 醬) in Korean, but the noodle dish is called jajangmyeon, not *jakjangmyeon, because its origin is not the Sino-Korean word, but a transliteration of the Chinese pronunciation. As the Chinese pronunciation of zhá sounded like jja (rather than ja) to Korean ears, the dish is known in South Korea as jjajangmyeon, and the vast majority of Korean Chinese restaurants use this spelling. For many years, until 22 August 2011, the National Institute of Korean Language did not recognize the word jjajangmyeon as an accepted idiomatic transliteration. The reason jjajangmyeon did not become the standard spelling was due to the transliteration rules for foreign words announced in 1986 by the Ministry of Education, which stated that the foreign obstruents should not be transliterated using doubled consonants except for some established usages. The lack of acknowledgment faced tough criticism from the supporters of the spelling jjajangmyeon, such as Ahn Do-hyeon, a Sowol Poetry Prize winning poet. Later, jjajangmyeon was accepted as an alternative standard spelling alongside jajangmyeon in the National Language Deliberation Council and, on 31 August, included as a standard spelling in the Standard Korean Language Dictionary.

Source: Wikipedia