Delectably Not Delectable

I've encountered some pretty strange foods over here so far, but the ones that keep throwing me for a loop and the food items I think are going to be salty, but end up being sweet when I put them on my tongue.  I couldn't really describe the feeling of thinking and expecting that you are going to be tasting salt and really getting sugar.  Like when for lunch one day we had a side dish of sugar sprinkled seaweed.  Everyone knows, seaweed is from the sea, which is salty, thus making so much sense that I perceived the white grains on my seaweed to be salt.  They were sugar and nasty. 

There has been a few instances like that. Like, when we had a "ham and cheese" sandwich for snack.  Upon closer investigation, the ham and cheese impostor was in reality a spam, cheese, mustard and strawberry jelly sandwich. Nasty. 

There was also the time I ordered a ball of Kimbap: tuna in the middle, surrounded by rice, topped with a sprinkling of  dried seaweed and sugar.  That made no sense.  

There is also cinnamon sugar fried chicken, which is actually pretty phenomenal, I'm not angry about that one in the least. Fried chicken is actually a big deal here, there are just tons and tons of fried chicken joints everywhere.  

There is also a great deal of sweet potato usage going on here.  I've had a great deal of sweet potato fries, mashed sweet potatoes instead of mashed potatoes, and the other day for snack we had sweet potato, hard boiled egg, and crab mash.  I don't know the correct term for it, other than: nasty.  

I know I've said it before, but once again, they are pretty sneaky with the fish/squid/octopus.  They really like to just throw in some tentacles in the main meal at lunch or serve this disgustingly fishy anchovy salad.  It's literally just hundreds of dried tiny tiny fish slathered in salt and some other sauce.  Also in category nasty.  

Quail eggs.  They sound like a delicacy, but they're nasty.  They are typically served here marinated in some form of sweet vinegary sauce.  Just a large bowl of tiny boiled quail eggs sitting in a vat of sweet weird vinegar sauce.   

South Korea honestly, just doesn't have much going for it in the culinary arts.  There are only so many ways to eat creatures from the sea.