If you spend an evening walking the side-streets between Wongamat Beach and Naklua proper, you'll notice something that wasn't true even three years ago: Korean is now arguably the second-most-spoken language on the strip, after Thai. The restaurant scene has moved with that population.
The early Korean restaurants in Pattaya served Korean tourists — they had laminated menus with photos and the same broad-stroke KBBQ format you'd find at a chain. The current wave is different: real grills with thick-cut samgyeopsal, proper marinades on galbi, banchan rotations that actually rotate, and Korean fried chicken specialists who would survive on a Hongdae street.
The interesting part is what this enables next. A genuinely Korean-population-supporting restaurant scene means the bar for Korean fine dining gets reachable. We expect a 1500+ THB-per-person Korean tasting menu to open in Pattaya by year-end. It would not have made sense in 2023; it will make sense by November.