ANSWER: exploding (炸) soy sauce (醬) noodles (麵)?
The Chinese character 炸 (작) can mean "explode," as in the Sino-Korean word 작렬 (炸裂), which means "explosion," but the character can also mean "to fry." So, since 醬 (장) means "soy sauce," or "fermented soybean paste," and 麵 (면) means "noodles," 자장면 (炸醬麵) can literally translate as "fried (炸) soy sauce (醬) noodles (麵)."
Some may wonder why the noodle dish is called 자장면 (炸醬麵) instead of 작장면, given that the character 炸 is pronounced 작 in Korean. I wondered that, too. Well, since 자장면 is a Chinese dish, it seems that Koreans have decided to use the Chinese pronunciation of the character 炸, which is /ja/ (자).
By the way, the Chinese word 炸鷄 (작계) means "fried (炸) chicken (鷄)," not "exploding chicken."
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| From Dong-A's Prime Korean-English Dictionary |
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| From Dong-A's Prime Korean-English Dictionary |
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| Taken from an article on Wikipedia |
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