SafePlate Korea
Allergy & Vegan Order Card for Travelers
Select Avoidance
Nothing selected yet. Pick the ingredients or diet you need to avoid above, and the Korean request card you can show restaurant staff will appear here.
Card Generated by SafePlate Korea
How to use this card at a Korean restaurant
Start at the top of this page and open the selector for the things you need to avoid. Tap an allergy item, such as Peanut or Shrimp, and it becomes a chip that stays visible while you work. You can also choose one diet, for example Vegan or Halal, and add anything that is not on the list in the free text field for other ingredients. Every choice you make goes into the Korean card below, so you can watch the card grow as you decide what to include.
The card is written in Korean because it is meant for the person who cooks or serves your food, not for you. It opens with a greeting, says that you have allergies to the ingredients listed under it, names each of those ingredients in Korean with the English label printed underneath in smaller type, and closes by asking the kitchen to make sure that none of them are used. If you want to read the same content in your own language, open the small translation icon next to the greeting; it shows what the card says without changing the card itself.
Show the card before you order rather than after the food arrives. Hand your phone over or hold it where the staff can read it, and give them time to read to the end. Larger view makes the text much bigger, which helps when the card has to be read across a counter or in a dim room. Listen aloud plays the Korean text with the Korean voice that is already installed on your phone or computer; if your device has no Korean voice, nothing plays and the card is still there to show.
Save image downloads the card as a picture file. Keep that picture in your photo album before you go out, because the card is built in the browser and nothing is stored between visits: closing or reloading the page clears your selections and you would have to make them again. A saved picture also works when the restaurant has no usable network, and it can be shown at a market stall or a small shop where you would rather not handle a web page at all.
Expect a conversation rather than a silent transaction. Korean kitchens often prepare parts of a dish in advance and share sauces and broths between dishes, so the honest answer to your card may be that a dish cannot be made safely for you; treat that answer as a good outcome rather than as poor service, because a kitchen that says no is refusing to gamble with you. If the staff seem unsure, or if the answer is that a dish is probably fine, do not eat it. Ask which dishes can be made without the ingredients on your card, agree on one, and confirm again when the food arrives. Reset all clears every choice when you want to build a different card at the next restaurant.
Plan for a shared table. A Korean meal is often built around dishes that everyone reaches into, with a stew in the middle and side dishes in the centre of the table, and spoons and chopsticks move between them. Even a dish cooked without the ingredient you avoid can pick it up on the table. Ask for a small plate of your own and a separate serving spoon or tongs when you order, and take your portion before the dish is shared.
Hidden allergens in Korean food
Korean cooking builds flavor with fermented pastes, dried seafood, and shared stocks, and those go into a dish long before it reaches the table. A bowl that looks like plain vegetables can still carry fish, wheat, or nuts that nobody thinks to mention, because the ingredient arrived in a sauce rather than as a visible piece of food. What follows is a short orientation and not a full ingredient guide, and none of it replaces asking the restaurant about the dish you are about to order.
Anchovy broth is the clearest example. Dried anchovies, often with kelp, are simmered to make the base for many soups, stews, and noodle bowls, and the fish is strained out before serving, so nothing fishy is visible in the bowl. The same stock can turn up in side dishes and in the sauce of a stir fry. If you avoid fish, ask whether the broth is made with anchovy, because a dish described as a vegetable soup can still start from it.
Salted fermented seafood, known as jeotgal, and fish sauce are the next thing to ask about. Both are common in kimchi and in the small side dishes that arrive free with a meal, and they can also season soups and braised dishes. Because the seafood is fermented and blended in, it is rarely recognizable on the plate. Kimchi made without them exists, but it is not the default, so a plate of kimchi should not be assumed to be free of fish or shellfish.
Soy sauce is the usual reason wheat turns up where it was not expected. Many brewed soy sauces are made from soybeans together with wheat, and soy sauce goes into marinades, dipping sauces, braised dishes, and glazes across a menu. A restaurant cannot be assumed to keep a gluten-free version. If you avoid wheat or gluten, say so about the sauce as well as the noodles, and treat anything dark and savory as a sauce worth asking about.
Sesame oil and sesame seeds are used as a finishing touch on rice bowls, vegetable side dishes, soups, and grilled meat, and a spoonful stirred in at the end is hard to see. Sesame is one of the items this card can name, so pick it if it matters to you. Other things worth naming are peanut and other nuts in cold noodle sauces and sweets, egg in pancakes and fried batters, and shellfish in seafood pancakes and stews.
Cafes and street stalls carry their own risk, and it is a different one. A cafe usually runs every drink through the same blender and steams milk in the same pitcher, so milk, soy, and nuts move between drinks even when the recipe you ordered contains none of them. A street stall cooks its whole menu on one griddle or in one fryer. If you react to traces rather than to portions, treat both as places where an honest answer is that contact cannot be ruled out.
The card can name 27 ingredients. 19 of them are the ingredients that Korean labeling rules require food businesses to declare, and the other 8 were added because travelers ask about them often even though the labeling rule does not cover them. That is a useful starting point rather than a complete map of what a kitchen uses, which is why the card ends by asking the staff to check, and why the free text field is there for anything the list does not name.
If a reaction starts
Ask the staff to call 119 for you and say that you need an ambulance. 119 is the number for both ambulances and the fire service, and staff can give the address in Korean, which is the part that is hardest to do in a language you do not speak. That is faster than calling yourself or setting off for a hospital alone.
Frequently asked questions
What does this site actually give me?
It gives you a short request written in Korean that you can show to restaurant staff. You pick the ingredients you must avoid and, if you follow one, a diet; the page assembles those choices into a card with a greeting, your ingredients listed in Korean, anything you typed yourself, and a closing request to check that none of them are used. It is a way to be understood in a restaurant, and it is not a medical document.
Is anything I select saved or sent anywhere?
No. The card is built in your browser, your selections stay in the memory of the page you are looking at, and they are not sent to a server or stored on your device. There is no account and no login. Because nothing is kept, reloading or closing the page clears everything, which is why saving the card as an image is worth doing before you go out for the day.
Is it free, and do I need to install anything?
The site is free to use and there is nothing to install. It runs as an ordinary web page, so a browser is all you need. The site carries advertising, and that is what pays for keeping it available at no charge; the privacy policy page explains what the advertising vendors may set or read in your browser.
Which languages does the site support?
The interface and the item labels are available in 4 languages: English, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. The card that the restaurant reads is always Korean, whichever of the 4 you pick, because a card the staff cannot read would be of no use. The translation view lets you read the Korean content back in your own language before you show it. The guide pages and these questions are available in all 4 of them.
How much can I rely on the card?
Every Korean sentence and every ingredient name on the card is fixed text that was written and checked in advance, so nothing is translated or invented while you use the site. What the card cannot do is see inside the kitchen. It states what you must avoid and asks the staff to check, and the rest depends on how the dish is made, so treat a clear no from a restaurant as the card doing its work.
What if the staff are not sure?
Do not eat the dish. A shrug, or a reply that it is probably fine, is not the same as a clear no, and that is the most common way a card fails. Ask again about the one ingredient that matters most, or ask which dish the kitchen is sure about. If no clear answer comes, this is not the right restaurant for this meal, and leaving is a normal thing to do.
What if the ingredient I avoid is not on the list?
Use the free text field for other ingredients. Whatever you type is placed on the card exactly as you typed it, without translation, so the safest habit is to write the word in Korean if you can find it and to keep it short. The list itself holds 27 items and there are 9 diets to pick from, which covers the common cases, but the field is there because no fixed list fits every person.
I have a severe allergy. Is this enough?
Treat the card as one part of what you do, not the whole of it. It helps you be understood, and it does not remove the risk of traces, shared oil, and shared cooking surfaces, which a busy kitchen may not avoid. Carry the medication your doctor prescribed, tell the people you eat with what to watch for, and be ready to leave a restaurant that cannot answer your questions. This site is a personal project, not medical advice.