Before I had assumed that all the red colored Korean dishes would have similar flavor profiles, but it seems soon tofu gets its primary flavor from kimchi juice, while tteokbokki gets its flavor from gochujang. Korean dishes use a mix of different pepper sauces like kimchi, gochujang, gochugaru (which I didn’t have).
I used my homemade vegetable stock for both dishes instead of anchovy juices, roughly following the recipe from here.
Tteokbokki turned out pretty authentic tasting but too salty, likely because I used a bit too much gochujang.
Soon tofu didn’t quite taste like what we have in the restaurants. I’m lost on how to improve the flavor since I still have too little understanding of the profiles of Korean dishes. The internet hasn’t been too helpful as different recipes online all called for different ingredients. Will have to try at a restaurant again with deeper analysis to see what I’m missing / read more online.