Short answer: three restaurant meals a day in Seoul come to ₩20,146–33,761 ($14.56–$24.40) at official average prices — a gimbap breakfast, a noodle or rice lunch, and a stew or soup dinner. The arithmetic is below, so you can rebuild it around your own appetite.
How much is a day of restaurant meals in Seoul?
| A budget day | Price | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Breakfast | Gimbap (1 roll) | ₩3,838 | $2.77 |
| Lunch | Jajangmyeon (black-bean noodles) | ₩7,654 | $5.53 |
| Dinner | Kimchi jjigae set meal | ₩8,654 | $6.25 |
| Total | ₩20,146 | $14.56 |
| A fuller day | Price | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Breakfast | Gimbap (1 roll) | ₩3,838 | $2.77 |
| Lunch | Bibimbap | ₩11,769 | $8.51 |
| Dinner | Samgyetang (ginseng chicken soup) | ₩18,154 | $13.12 |
| Total | ₩33,761 | $24.40 |
Two assumptions worth stating. Every figure is a Seoul-wide average from the official dining-out survey, so any single restaurant will sit a little above or below it. And the combinations are ours: many people in Korea skip breakfast or pick it up at a convenience store, so a sit-down gimbap breakfast is the generous version of a Korean morning rather than the typical one.
What do individual dishes cost in Seoul?
| Dish | Unit | Seoul average | USD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samgyeopsal (grilled pork belly) | 200g | ₩21,321 | $15.41 |
| Samgyetang (ginseng chicken soup) | 1 serving | ₩18,154 | $13.12 |
| Naengmyeon (cold noodles) | 1 serving | ₩12,615 | $9.12 |
| Bibimbap | 1 serving | ₩11,769 | $8.51 |
| Kalguksu (knife-cut noodles) | 1 serving | ₩10,038 | $7.25 |
| Kimchi jjigae set meal | 1 serving | ₩8,654 | $6.25 |
| Jajangmyeon (black-bean noodles) | 1 serving | ₩7,654 | $5.53 |
| Gimbap | 1 roll | ₩3,838 | $2.77 |
Prices are per serving except pork belly, which the survey normalises to 200g of meat rather than a finished meal — one reason it stays out of the daily totals above.
Meat dinners and drinks have their own pages
The one big upgrade this page does not price is the grilled-meat dinner. The survey’s pork-belly figure is 200g of meat, not the meal that forms around it — the rice, the stew, the drinks — and portion sizes vary enough that folding one number into a daily total would be a guess dressed as arithmetic. It has its own arithmetic instead: see what grilled pork belly costs in Seoul, including what two real menus charge.
Alcohol is priced on its own page too, for the same reason: the interesting number there is not one figure but the gap between the shop and the restaurant. See what soju costs in Korea.
What does this budget not include?
Anything the survey does not price, we do not price. That excludes cafés and coffee, delivery and its fees, street food, snacks and desserts — not because they are cheap or unimportant, but because this site does not print numbers it cannot trace to a source. The eight dishes above are what the Ministry survey actually collects in Seoul restaurants, and the totals stay inside that list.
What this page cannot tell you
What this page is not: the figures are city-wide averages, published monthly and marked provisional, so the restaurant in front of you will not match them exactly. The daily totals are our combinations of surveyed dishes, not a surveyed cost-of-living figure. And it speaks for Seoul only, and the survey itself cautions against comparing one region with another.
Official figures: the Chamgagyeok dining-out survey, June 2026, Seoul. Daily totals are sums of those figures, in the combinations stated above. Converted at ₩1,383 = US$1, the Korea Eximbank dealing basis rate for 24 August 2026.
Bottom line. ₩20,146–33,761 a day covers three sit-down meals, in these combinations, at Seoul’s official average prices. A grilled-meat dinner or a night of drinks moves it up from there — and both of those have their own pages, with real menus attached.