SEOUL – Once, when chef Junghyun Park was young, his cousin brought a piece of fresh honeycomb over to his house in Seoul.

Mr Park’s mother cherished it, as fresh honey was coveted for its health properties in South Korea, and doled it out only when someone got sick.

Stirred into a mug of hot water with a little ginger, the honey made fine tea.

“We were drinking it almost like medicine,” Mr Park said.

Perhaps no Korean dish represents the value of honey more than the ancient dessert yakgwa, a deep-fried honey cookie soaked in syrup.

Yakgwa (“yak” means medicine and “gwa” means confection) is more than a vessel for coveted sweetness. It connects generations and tells the story of Korea’s reverence for tradition and optimism for the future.

Enjoyed since the Goryeo dynasty (918-1392), these treats have seen a resurgence in popularity in South Korea and beyond, thanks in part to videos on YouTube and TikTok, and Korean dramas like the Netflix series Alchemy Of Souls.

South Korea’s “Generation MZ” (a hybrid of millennials and Gen Zers) are the drivers of this new fixation on the past, more specifically young Koreans who call themselves “halmaenials” (a portmanteau of the words “halmoni”, meaning grandma, and millennial).

This nostalgic generation has revitalised not only the culinary custom of yakgwa, but also the market for it.

Traditionally, yakgwa was served only on special occasions, such as festival days like Chuseok and Seollal, birthdays and at life’s four rites of passage, known as gwan-hon-sang-je: coming-of-age (gwan), marriage (hon), death (sang) and the veneration of the dead (je), a custom which many families still practise today.

The lesson is universal: Only in maturing through life do you get to partake in its richest pleasures.

Today, Koreans enjoy yakgwa outside of those rites of passage, like as an after-school snack or weekday dessert with vanilla ice cream.

Korean restaurant Cho Dang Gol in Manhattan serves on-the-house packages of delicious mini yakgwa at the end of the meal with your bill, like soft mints or sticks of gum.

Still, a bite of homemade yakgwa tends to exceed anything store-bought, nine times out of 10.

Since yakgwa is fried, the oil can go rancid in mass-produced packaged versions, so making the cookies from scratch is a quest worth pursuing. When fresh, the cookie’s sticky, amber syrup should drip off slowly, drenching your fingers, like Winnie the Pooh’s paw, in honey.

Today, Koreans enjoy yakgwa outside of those rites of passage, like as an after-school snack or weekday dessert with vanilla ice cream. PHOTO: NYTIMES

While the chewy outside gives way, the crunchy interior resists slightly. (The YouTube star and cookbook author Maangchi uses the word “juicy” to describe biting into fresh yakgwa.)

This idiosyncratic dough is a tangle of flour, sesame oil, soju, honey and spices.

Ground ginger and cinnamon recall the gently sugared flavours of Korean staples like sujeonggwa, a refreshing cinnamon punch, and yaksik, a lovely sweetened rice with chestnuts, pine nuts and jujubes (a kind of red date).

The crispy, flaky fried cookies are dunked in a glossy jocheong, a not-too-sweet Korean brown rice syrup, which here is boiled with chunks of fresh ginger and a little honey.

In many ways, the frying is as easy as baking; your medium just happens to be a steady, simmering pool of oil, crowded with disks of dough. They puff ever so slightly to reveal their layers. Soaking crunchy cookie in gingery syrup requires patience, but that’s all right. The sweetest things in life take time. NYTIMES