French Busker Paco Waited 2 Hours in -13°C for Korea's Most Famous Cake — and It Was Worth It

It was minus 13 degrees Celsius in Daejeon when Paco arrived at the front of Sungsimdang bakery's pre-opening queue. He had been waiting for two hours. And when he finally got his hands on a strawberry rice cake and a matcha rice cake, his verdict was immediate: "In France, this would cost 80 euros."

The moment comes from the latest episode of web series Ganjeolhan-ip (간절한입), a Studio Suze production that follows guests tracking down the Korean food they crave most. The episode, featuring Paco alongside new MC Kim Ji-yu, dropped March 31 at 6:30 PM. It has already drawn attention as one of the season's warmer installments — partly because of the extreme conditions, and partly because of what happened in line.

Who Is Paco?

Known in Korea and among Korean tourists as the "Eiffel Tower celebrity," Paco is a French performer who built his reputation near one of the world's most visited landmarks — a location that puts him in regular contact with Korean visitors. That consistent presence in a tourist-heavy space made him a familiar face for a generation of Koreans who had encountered him abroad, and he has since become a recognizable figure in Korean entertainment media as a result.

For the Ganjeolhan-ip episode, the premise was simple: Paco had not yet tried Korean cake, and he wanted to fix that before leaving the country. The choice of Sungsimdang as the target reflects a very specific kind of aspiration. The Daejeon bakery, operating since 1956, has grown from a small neighborhood shop into a national institution with lines that regularly extend around the block. Its "sirutteok" — layered rice cakes typically topped with fruit or flavored cream — are among its most sought-after items and frequently sell out within hours of the morning opening.

The Queue, the Cold, and the Fans

Paco arrived at Daejeon Station at 7:00 AM, meeting Kim Ji-yu in freezing temperatures before they made their way to Sungsimdang. His reaction to the scene outside the bakery was genuine: "In Paris, there's no waiting culture. Three minutes maximum." In front of him was a queue that required more than two hours to clear.

What the show captures in that stretch of waiting is not just patience — it is something more interesting. Korean fans, recognizing Paco in the queue, approached him for photos and brought him small gifts. The bakery's line became an impromptu fan meeting, with Paco greeting each person and responding with visible warmth. "I'm so happy," he told the camera, in Korean, during the middle of the wait. The spontaneity of the moment — strangers recognizing someone they hadn't expected to see, in a city they had all come to for the same reason — gave the episode a texture that scripted variety segments typically cannot manufacture.

By the time Paco received his strawberry and matcha rice cakes, the emotional payoff had been accumulating for two hours of footage. His comparison to the 80-euro French equivalent was not just a punchline — it was a genuine expression of surprise at what Korean bakery culture offers for its price, and his repeated "I can't believe this" reactions as he ate suggested the experience had met or exceeded the expectations that had brought him to the queue in the first place.

Chemistry With Kim Ji-yu and a Confession About Korean Study

The Ganjeolhan-ip episode also highlights Paco's connection with co-host Kim Ji-yu. Their chemistry, which plays naturally across several segments of the episode, includes a sequence where Paco pays her an unprompted compliment — "You look most beautiful without makeup" — and follows up with a direct question about whether she has a boyfriend. The exchange, brief and unscripted in tone, generated laughter on set and has been clipped extensively from the preview material.

Less comedic but perhaps more resonant is a separate moment in the episode where Paco reveals that he studies Korean every day. The admission comes naturally, in the context of his comfort with the language throughout the episode, and it reframes his familiarity with Korean food, culture, and visitors as something he has been actively building rather than simply absorbing by proximity.

"I study Korean every day," he tells the camera, and then delivers a personal message to his Korean fans — a segment that, according to the episode preview material, closes out the Daejeon sequence on a more sincere note than the sugary punchlines that preceded it.

Sungsimdang and the Cultural Currency of the Open-Run

For viewers who have never queued for Sungsimdang, some context is worth having. The bakery operates on a first-come, first-served basis for its most popular items, which means that arriving before opening — the "open-run" in Korean consumer slang — is essentially the only reliable strategy. The practice has become a marker of genuine enthusiasm in Korean food culture: the willingness to stand in a real line, in real weather, for something that might sell out before you reach the counter.

Paco's two-hour wait, conducted in the depths of a Korean winter cold snap and broadcast to an audience that understands exactly what was at stake, is a form of cultural participation that reads differently from a tourist snapshot or a sponsored restaurant visit. He showed up, waited, and earned the cakes. The 80-euro line landed because it was delivered by someone who had genuinely done the work to eat them.

Ganjeolhan-ip airs via streaming platforms with new episodes released on Tuesday evenings. The full Paco episode is available from March 31.