Korean snacks · Turtle Chips

Turtle Chips are huge in America. In Korea, they already peaked.

By Sunny Park · Updated August 2, 2026

Heads up: some links below are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy through them — at no extra cost to you. I bought everything on this page myself.

The numbers, both directions

I want to start with the data because this is the part nobody outside Korea sees.

In 2021, only six snacks in Korea sold more than Turtle Chips — Pepero, Shrimp Crackers, Poca Chip, Home Run Ball, Kokal Kon and Choco Pie. That was a genuine hit. It was the first snack launched in the 2010s to break into Korea's overall top ten since Honey Butter Chip.

Then it dropped out. It doesn't appear in Korea's current top ten at all.

Meanwhile, going the other way: Turtle Chips is now sold in around 30 countries. In the US it's in Costco, Sam's Club, Five Below and Miniso, and it's stocked in the staff snack bars at Google and Netflix. Orion expects roughly ₩20bn from North America alone this year, and in September 2025 the company said Turtle Chips had passed ₩500bn in cumulative global sales — describing it as a potential mega-brand on the level of Choco Pie. Orion's own earnings releases now cite Turtle Chips almost entirely as an export story: domestic sales grew 3.2% in the first half of 2025, while overseas sales grew 11.6%, led by Turtle Chips among others.

So the honest framing isn't "Koreans don't like it." It's that Korea already had its Turtle Chips moment, and it's over. America is having it now.

Why it faded here — my theory

This is where I'll be upfront that I'm giving you my opinion as a Korean rather than a fact from a report. But I think the reason is simple, and it's something you can only really see from inside Korea.

Turtle Chips didn't taste new to us.

Korea has had a snack called Corn Chip since 1989 — made by Crown, rebranded as "C Corn Chip" in 2005, and eaten by basically every Korean who was a child in the nineties. Including me. It's fried corn dough, savoury and toasty, and it's still common enough to place inside Korea's top twenty.

When Turtle Chips arrived in 2017, the pitch was the four-layer structure — thin sheets stacked to look like a turtle's shell, which is where the name comes from. And the texture genuinely is different; I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But the flavour and the corn base were familiar. To a Korean picking up that first bag, it read as "a thinner, layered version of a snack I've eaten my whole life." Interesting, not revelatory.

That matters more than it sounds, because texture is a weaker hook than flavour. A new texture is exciting once. A flavour you love is something you come back to for thirty years — which is exactly what Shrimp Crackers and Corn Chip have. When the launch buzz around Turtle Chips faded, there wasn't a deep habit underneath holding it up. Industry coverage in Korea has described the same thing in blunter terms: its base of loyal buyers was never that solid.

Which is exactly why it works in America

Flip that around and you get the reason it's succeeding abroad.

An American shopper has no Corn Chip in their memory. There's no 1989 reference point, no "this is basically that snack but thinner." What they get is a corn chip in four thin stacked layers, which shatters instead of snapping — and there is genuinely nothing like it in a US snack aisle.

The same product, the same bag, lands completely differently depending on what you've already eaten. That's not a knock on Turtle Chips. It's the single most useful thing I can tell an American reader about it.

The flavours

The lineup moves fast. Orion keeps launching new ones and quietly retiring the ones that don't hold, so what's on a Korean shelf this month isn't what was there two years ago — and it isn't what's on a US shelf either.

Flavours rotate constantly and regional lineups differ. Sweet Cinnamon and Vanilla were both discontinued in Korea, and limited runs come and go — so treat any flavour list, including this one, as a snapshot.

Look at that list again and you'll notice something. Chimichurri is not a flavour you develop for Korean shoppers. Neither is a chicken flavour launched simultaneously in two countries. Orion is building this brand's flavour range for the world, not for the shelf I stand in front of — which is consistent with everything else in this article.

On Choco Churros

This is the one that gets recommended most online, and I want to give a slightly cooler take than you'll usually read. It's a real flavour — cinnamon and chocolate over a corn base, and it works better than that description suggests. It's not badly made at all.

But it hasn't held on in Korea either. It drove the biggest sales year Turtle Chips ever had, and then the whole brand still slid. A flavour that spikes and doesn't stick is a novelty, and I think that's what this is. Worth eating once, and I understand why it goes viral. I just don't know many Koreans who keep a bag in the cupboard.

So should you buy it?

My verdict: Turtle Chips is a well-made snack that arrived in Korea slightly too late to feel new, and arrived in America at exactly the right time. If you're American, you're getting it in the good window. Buy the Corn Soup, eat it for the texture, and don't feel like you're missing out on some national Korean obsession — because there isn't one.

Where to buy

These links are filtered to Prime-eligible sellers. Since the US ended duty-free treatment for low-value parcels, listings shipping straight from Korea can be slow and can land you a customs bill at the door.