To be No. 1 in Korea, it first became No. 1 worldwide

For a long time, the No. 1 frozen dumpling in Korea was Gohyang Mandu. Launched in 1987, it held that place for nearly 30 years, and CJ CheilJedang was second. The market was no longer growing. Instead of staying in that place, it went to America.

Why dumplings, and not kimchi, bulgogi or bibimbap? Korean food was still unfamiliar, but almost everywhere in the world has something like a dumpling. Italy has ravioli, Türkiye has mantı, Poland has pierogi. It was not an unknown food; it was a familiar shape.

Why America, and not Japan or China, where the Korean Wave had spread first? America is home to huge frozen food companies. California in particular had a strong interest in Asia and was relatively used to eating unfamiliar food. It was good ground for a company no one knew to test itself.

First, it secured factories to make the product locally. It bought Annie Chun's in 2005 and Omni Foods in 2006, laying the groundwork to make food in the US. Its first product, launched in 2010, was neither meat nor kimchi dumplings. With the wellness trend, people were eating chicken instead of pork, and cilantro had spread as an Asian herb, so it was a Chicken & Cilantro Mini Wonton.

Next came the dumpling itself. bibigo Wang Gyoza, launched in 2013, used filling that was chopped rather than ground, a thinly rolled wrapper, and was steamed before it went out. With ground filling, you can't tell what's inside as you chew. Chopped filling keeps the ingredients distinct even when made in a factory. In 2013, Ling Ling led the US frozen dumpling market with about 30 percent; bibigo was second with about 17 percent. In 2016, the top spot, held for 25 years, changed hands.

In 2018, bibigo dumplings alone passed 1 trillion won in annual sales, the first single product to do so in Korea's food industry. What remained was shelf space. In February 2019, CJ bought the US frozen food company Schwan's for about 2 trillion won. It was the largest acquisition in the group's history, paid for by selling CJ Healthcare for 1.3 trillion won. Schwan's had 17 factories in the US and a distribution network reaching some 30,000 food stores. It was not buying frozen food so much as a place inside refrigerator doors across America.

Overseas food sales went from 700 billion won before the Schwan's purchase to 3.154 trillion won in 2019, and in 2025 reached 5.9247 trillion won, surpassing domestic sales. On American supermarket shelves, these dumplings are labeled Mandu, not Dumpling.

Worth adding: it became No. 1 in Korea in 2015 and No. 1 in the US in 2016, one year apart. But it had bought a US factory nine years earlier, in 2006. Instead of waiting its turn in a market where it was second, it took a familiar shape to an unfamiliar country first.

Though it wasn't No. 1 in Korea, though it was a strange, unknown food,
a spirit of challenge and bold acquisitions made it the world's No. 1 dumpling.