Ttaeng Cho

Ttaeng Cho is a South Korean hot pepper name used in seed trade and culinary references for the extra-spicy Korean chilli known in Korea as Cheongyang pepper. Korean tourism sources explicitly identify ttaengcho as Cheongyang chili pepper, placing it as a recognised hot Korean cultivar rather than a separate unrelated novelty line. It was developed in 1983 by Yoo Il-Woong, and later became closely associated with Cheongyang County and with Korea's strong preference for sharp, fresh chilli heat in everyday food.

The plant is described as a productive annuum with a compact to bushy habit, commonly around 70 cm tall in a pot and larger in the ground. The pods are slender, cayenne-like, and thin, usually about 10 cm long and just under 10 mm wide in one live seed listing, while other Cheongyang references describe fruit around 4 to 5 cm long and about 10 mm in diameter. The overall form is consistently a narrow, pointed, small-to-medium Korean hot pepper rather than a thick-walled capsicum type.

The fruit is typically harvested green for fresh use and ripens red at maturity. In Korean food culture it is used to add a sharper, more aggressive heat than standard Korean peppers, and it appears in soups, stews, ramyeon, stir-fries, tteokbokki, dipping sauces, and kimbap. It is also dried and ground for hotter chilli powder and gochugaru-style uses, which is why it has remained important both as a fresh kitchen pepper and as a drying type.

Its flavour is regularly described as bright, grassy, sharp, and clean, with enough heat to stand apart from ordinary Korean green peppers without moving into superhot territory. Live sources place it around 10,000 SHU, with broader market references sometimes giving a wider range, but the pepper's identity remains consistent as one of the hotter mainstream Korean chilli types. That heat, combined with its narrow pod shape, good productivity, and strong place in Korean cooking, is what defines Ttaeng Cho.