South Korea's food watchdog said Friday it will tighten controls on the safety of the country's two most popular snacks as makers often fail to meet sanitary requirements.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety said it has announced a revision to the enforcement decree of the Food Sanitation Act that mandates manufacturers of "sundae" and "tteokbokki" abide by safety guidelines called the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points. 

Sundae is the popular Korean-style blood sausage and tteokbokki refers to a Korean snack food made with rice cake, fish cake and red chili sauce.

HACCP is a systematic approach to identifying and ferreting out all materials and manufacturing processes that can jeopardize the health of consumers as the food is made and distributed.

The tougher standard will be applied to sundae made by companies with two or more employees from December this year, and to tteok, or rice cake, manufactured by firms with 10 or more workers starting in December 2017.

Despite their popularity, the two national snacks have been stigmatized as low-quality food as they often fail sanitation checks.

In June and July last year, the ministry conducted safety inspections of 92 sundae makers, of which 42 were detected violating sanitation guidelines, including keeping pork past its sell-by date.

According to the ministry, South Korea had 200 sundae manufacturers as of the end of 2014, with 140 of them being one-man operations and 94 percent posting sales of less than 500 million won ($438,000) a year. Of the total, only 35 have voluntarily received HACCP certification.

As of end-2014, there were 1,212 tteok makers nationwide. Of them, 94 percent had annual sales of less than 500 million won, while 103 manufacturers have received HACCP certification. (Yonhap)