삼양식품 탱글 프로틴 파스타, 우지라면과 정반대로 간 유튜브 9개월

"Buldak holds its place as Samyang Foods' global core brand, and Tangle, Maep and Pulse Lab are not there to replace it. They are an attempt to expand, to build new points of contact with the wider world." That was the line drawn by Kim Jung-soo, chairwoman of Samyang Foods, in public remarks on June 24, 2026. A ramen company selling pasta already reads as unfamiliar, and the chairwoman called that unfamiliar side expansion rather than replacement.

That expansion is named Tangle Protein Pasta. Placed side by side with Samyang 1963 Woo-ji Ramen, whose sponsorships ran a little over seven months earlier, the same company's choices of YouTube channel and video format went in different directions.

A ramen company started selling pasta

Tangle is a protein pasta brand that adds chickpeas to Samyang's patented dried-noodle process, and by Herald Business reporting the garlic shrimp variant contains 18g of protein. The lineup includes garlic shrimp and mushroom cream. It comes in a cup that finishes in four minutes in a microwave, so it is a grab-and-go item on convenience store shelves.

Offline, the trucks moved first. Starting at Hangang Yebitseom on June 21, 2026, then the Korea Press Center on the 22nd, Cheonggye Plaza in Jongno on the 23rd, and DDP Eoullim Plaza on the 24th, a support truck toured four locations across central Seoul. On site, a "Catch 18 Seconds" timer game borrowed the 18g protein figure directly. Yonhap News, Herald Business and several other outlets covered the campaign on the same day.

The YouTube activity picks up right after. In Dhesy's data, Tangle sponsorship videos start clustering on June 25, one day after the final support truck stop. All that can be confirmed is that the two schedules sit next to each other. Which one prompted the other cannot be settled from the data.

Before that came Woo-ji Ramen

Samyang 1963 is a premium ramen in which Samyang Foods used beef tallow again for the first time in 36 years, following the 1989 tallow controversy. Kyunghyang Shinmun framed the product as a return of the tallow heritage in a July 1, 2026 article. It is priced roughly 1.5 times higher than standard Samyang Ramen.

The results outran the price gap. Cumulative sales passed 7 million units within a month of launch, reported as exceeding 80% of the 2025 monthly average for Samyang Ramen Original. On July 1, the second product in the tallow lineup arrived: a premium jjajang ramen called Jjareureu.

So the same company is pushing soup-ramen heritage and protein pasta side by side within a span of about half a year. When products differ this much in character, the way they are promoted splits as well. The sponsorship records in Dhesy's data show that split directly.

The two products picked different YouTube channels

The seven Woo-ji Ramen sponsorships came from channels with a median of 1.97 million subscribers, five of which were above one million. The 27 Tangle Protein Pasta sponsorships came from channels with a median of 38,800 subscribers, and none crossed one million. Comparing medians, that is a gap of about 50.8 times. Format split as well: six of Woo-ji Ramen's seven videos were long-form, while 25 of Tangle's 27 were Shorts.

Before the numbers, the counting method. Only videos with a confirmed sponsorship banner were selected from Samyang Foods collaboration data, so videos where the brand was merely mentioned are excluded. One video equals one sponsorship count, and product classification used the product text recorded on each video. For channel scale, the median was used alongside the average, because a single channel with 14.2 million subscribers, Hamzy, pulls the average sharply upward.

Tangle sponsorship also has one earlier entry. On October 3, 2025, the channel Hyeri, with 2.43 million subscribers, posted a single long-form video that drew 1.837 million views. The 27 videos grouped as a campaign in this article are the concentrated run from June 2026 onward, and that earlier video sits inside the 40 Samyang Foods videos in the table below.

The last column shows how a single campaign pulls the brand-wide average. Samyang Foods' overall Shorts share of 70% is a figure created by those 27 Tangle videos entering the pool.

Sponsorship distribution across the ramen category as a whole was covered separately in an analysis of 56 sponsorships from Korea's four major ramen makers.

26 channels within four weeks, up to seven videos in one day

Woo-ji Ramen sponsorships ran from November 4 to December 28, 2025, spread over 54 days at a maximum of one video per day. No two videos ever shared a publish date. Tangle Pasta went out through 26 channels within 28 days, from June 18 to July 16, 2026, with seven videos posted on July 3 alone.

Thirteen videos landed in the three days from July 1 to July 3. That is close to double the entire Woo-ji Ramen campaign volume, absorbed in three days.

The nature of the participating channels was checked separately. To distinguish derivative Shorts cut from long-form uploads versus channels that make Shorts natively, the Shorts ratio of each of the 26 channels' 2026 uploads was recounted. The median was 76%, and 19 channels were above 70%.

In other words, the sponsorship targets were channels that run on Shorts as their main output. It reads less as "the sponsored videos happened to be Shorts" and more as "channels that already run on Shorts were selected."

Categories widened beyond food

The seven Woo-ji Ramen sponsorships clustered in mukbang territory: four food, two entertainment, one travel. The 27 Tangle Pasta videos spread out into 13 food, six vlog, two fitness, two fashion, two beauty, one parenting and one home living. A diet-friendly convenience food gave the product room to reach fitness, vlog and parenting channels.

More videos did not translate into more reach. The combined view count produced by all 27 Tangle videos together was 1.67 million, about 40% of the 4.33 million produced by the seven Woo-ji Ramen videos together. Within that 1.67 million there is concentration as well. One Shorts video from Hanyu drew 899,000 views and one long-form video from Hello, This Is Choi Hwa-jung drew 454,000, so two videos accounted for 81% of the total. The median view count across all 27 videos was 6,194, and recounting only the remaining 25 after removing the top two brings the median down to 5,507.

Seeding across many micro channels reads as a design that buys exposure frequency and contextual variety rather than raw reach. The same product appeared in settings as different as a diet meal, a late-night snack after work, and a kid's meal. Subscriber counts and categories are current snapshot values rather than values at the time of sponsorship, so that time gap should be kept in mind.

Tangle sits in the seat being prepared for what comes after Buldak

Tangle, Pulse Lab and Spindle belong to the post-Buldak new business line led by Jeon Byung-woo, the eldest son of chairwoman Kim Jung-soo. Chosun Biz-affiliated coverage introduced Jeon as a 32-year-old head of strategic planning who handles overseas subsidiary operations alongside new product planning. Through July, reports followed that a share transfer had put third-generation succession in motion.

Sponsorships for newer products have also started appearing again. In Dhesy's data, Edmmer posted a Shorts video for the Woo-ji jjajang ramen Jjareureu on July 17, and Meokjirung posted a long-form video for Buldak cream curry glass noodles on July 19. Two videos are too few to sort into either design.

What is clear is that Samyang Foods is currently pushing two axes of different character at once: soup-ramen heritage and health-oriented convenience food. As Jjareureu and Buldak cream curry glass noodle sponsorships accumulate in the second half, which grammar they follow, large-channel long-form or micro-channel Shorts, becomes the next thing to watch.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tangle Protein Pasta and how much protein does it contain

It is a pasta brand from Samyang Foods that adds chickpeas to a patented dried-noodle process to raise protein and fiber content. As of June 2026 reporting, the garlic shrimp product contains 18g of protein, and the lineup includes garlic shrimp and mushroom cream variants.

How does Samyang 1963 Woo-ji Ramen differ from standard Samyang Ramen

It is a premium ramen that uses beef tallow again for the first time in 36 years since the 1989 tallow controversy. It is priced about 1.5 times higher than standard Samyang Ramen and passed 7 million cumulative units within a month of launch. On July 1, 2026, the second tallow lineup product, the jjajang ramen Jjareureu, was released.

What could visitors try at the Samyang Foods booth at Kurly Food Festa

According to a question posted on Naver Knowledge iN, the plant-protein snack Pulse Lab, the protein pasta Tangle, and Samyang 1963, which passed 7 million units within a month of launch, were all run as tasting items. That suggests the three new products are being presented as one bundle.

How does Dhesy decide that a Samyang Foods YouTube video counts as sponsored

Dhesy counts only videos with a confirmed sponsorship disclosure. Videos where the brand is merely mentioned verbally or visible in the background are excluded. The 40 videos in this article passed that bar, and one video equals one sponsorship count.

Methodology: Based on Dhesy platform data covering 6,741 brands and 732,786 collaborations. The analysis covers 40 videos where a Samyang Foods brand slot was assigned and a sponsorship banner was confirmed. Shorts and long-form were separated using the is_short column value only, with no arbitrary video-length threshold applied. Subscriber counts and channel categories are current snapshot values. Dhesy data covers only collected collaborations and does not include every Samyang Foods YouTube sponsorship. Analysis period: 2025-10-03 to 2026-07-19 (KST).