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The $40M bet that made South Korea a food and cultural power
- f0ld 3y agoIt’s over for us Koreans when westerners realize that Kimchi is better consumed as bar nibbles.
- akiselev 3y agoThe easiest way to win hearts and minds is through the stomach [1]. I don’t know how effective South Korea’s program has been since LA’s Koreatown had tons of kbbq and other korean restaurants before 2009 but Thailand’s Global Thai [2] program has definitely improved the number and quality of Thai options around California. My understand is they’ve also helped all the restaurants standardize on recipes and core ingredients around a few manufacturers like AROY-D and Maesri so there’s quite a bit of quality control built into the diplomacy. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culinary_diplomacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culinary_diplomacy [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_cuisine#Culinary_diplomacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_cuisine#Culinary_diplom...
- mc32 3y agoQuite a few used to also have the Royal Portrait -maybe they still do.
- nonethewiser 3y agoThis is only tangential but I remember how sushi used to be a “weird” food to most Americans. Probably as recently as 10 or 15 years ago. And now its everywhere. Its right in the mix with pizza and tacos for standard restaurant niches. I see it in rural grocery stores very far away from any sort of big city. I think kimchi just doesnt have that kind of broad appeal but who knows. This is not to deny the effectiveness of Korea food diplomacy. Im just noting sushi as a really extreme case.
- cirgue 3y agoI live in Atlanta and Korean isn’t quite taco-level ubiquity but it’s darn close. Everyone I know under the age of 40 does an h-mart run somewhat regularly and kbbq is a goto group dinner spot.
- pkaye 3y agoDid you know salmon sushi in a recent creation. Pacific salmon tends to have parasites so Japanese didn't eat salmon sushi but Norway had salmon which was safer so they promoted it to the Japanese.
- zdragnar 3y agoKimchi is actually starting to pop up in surprising places away from city centers (my rural grocery store has some) but it sits around and by the time I got some, it was... not fresh. Sushi has the benefit of needing to be consumed fresh, except for fake crab which freezes well enough that you can find "sushi" at quite a few out of the way gas stations as well. Having access to an asian grocery store with fresh bean sprouts, kimchi, freshly made kimbap, good masala blends, all the herbs and so forth is probably the only thing I miss about living in a bigger city.
- fomine3 3y agoKimchi don't have to be "fresh", it's preference.
- carabiner 3y agoYou can get kimchi in a can. It's ok.
- zdragnar 3y agoI guess it could be good in a soup, but personally if it doesn't have at least some crunch I don't care for it. I had a bad experience with kimchi that went off and couldn't even taste any for a year without gagging as a result. That said, rural folk in this part of the country are more likely to appreciate a fresh kimchi than they would soft stuff; the same goes for sauerkraut (bagged vs canned).
- atleastoptimal 3y agoSouth Korea has only 40 million people yet has a significant worldwide cultural influence, definitely punching above its weight. I wonder if China were to implement the same tactics South Korea uses for cultural diplomacy, would the worldwide cultural influence of China reach levels 30x greater than South Korea?
- School-Cotton 3y agoHeavily censored popular media makes it hard to become a cultural powerhouse.
- AYBABTME 3y agoThat's true. Korea itself only developed its cultural industry abroad when the government relaxed censorship rules.
- nusaru 3y agoThat’s crazy, my city alone has more than 1/100 the population! Edit: 10x to 1/10 Edit 2: 1/10 to 1/100
- elbigbad 3y agoThe largest city in the world is Tokyo which is about 40M people.
- firecall 3y agoAre you sure? Is that a city on Planet Earth? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities
- foota 3y agoYour city has 400 million people?
- carabiner 3y ago
- givemeethekeys 3y agoAnother great example of diplomacy through food would be Thailand. Thai chefs come to America, start Thai restaurants here, promote their incredible food and wonderful hospitality. In-turn, I can't wait to visit Thailand one day, and you can bet I have a favorable view of Thai people if they happen to get into an argument with someone!
- nonethewiser 3y agoThere was 1 Thai restaurant in my smallish hometown. I moved very far away to a large metro and went to some Thai restaurant. Turns out the owners of these restaurants new eachother in Thailand.
- cj 3y agoEveryone is at most 7 connections away :) The world is smaller than we assume
- nawgz 3y agoWhat about those uncontacted tribes!?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mburns 3y ago> Everyone is at most 7 connections away That is not strictly true, but the world is certainly smaller than we tend to think. However, detractors argue that Milgram's experiment did not demonstrate such a link, and the "six degrees" claim has been decried as an "academic urban myth".’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation
- ojbyrne 3y agoThe article talks a lot about a similar Thai initiative.
- lvl102 3y agoThey’ve been doing this since mid 1990s for entertainment. They first targeted the Japanese market and as the industry grew they went global. This has to be one of the best returns for gov’t-led funding and initiative. They played to the strengths of their labor. Also helped that China’s economy absolutely took off during the same time.
- nl 3y agoThere is a graphic showing number of restaurants in selected countries and comparing to other cuisines. According to that there were only 2024 Chinese restaurants in 2009. I find this very hard to believe. TripAdvisor lists 500+ in Sydney alone!
- barbegal 3y ago2024 Korean restaurants in China in 2009
- stbl219z8y 3y agoLol. What does this have to do with Hubspot CRM?
- creakingstairs 3y agoSales & branding strategy feels pretty related to Hubspot or at least people who might be interested in Hubspot.
- jackcosgrove 3y agoSouth Korea is reaping the dividend of the demographic transition right now. They are where Japan was in the 1980s. They played their cards very well and were able to build up both hard and soft power during the growth years.
- alberth 3y agoHopefully they don’t experience Japans “Lost Decades”, where since ~1991, economically the national has stagnated. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades
- Mistletoe 3y agoHopefully America isn't about to experience the exact same thing. The similarities abound as our population grays and reproduction is at all time lows. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location... US net migration is declining drastically also. https://econofact.org/the-decline-in-u-s-net-migration https://econofact.org/the-decline-in-u-s-net-migration
- clove 3y agoJapan's stock market has been trending sideways for decades. Housing values only depreciate to zero over time. Japanese people have no way to easily invest locally. They no longer buy stocks. Virtually, the only reason to buy stock now is for discounts (e.g., buy transportation stocks for discounts on tickets; buy grocery store stocks for discounts on food). If America is headed this way, this is what to expect.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago> Housing values only depreciate to zero over time. That's true for every country, it's land that appreciates.
- tsunamifury 3y ago
- Jiro 3y agoFor k-pop, Japan has notoriously been very tight with licensing restrictions on music. That allowed Korea to leap ahead.
- throw0101b 3y agoNot sure if this is country-specific or label-specific, but a lot of Baby Metal reaction videos seem to get flagged, which is kind of silly given that these of things help spread awareness of the group / band.
- justinclift 3y agoNot just music, Japan have been extremely tight with at least anime and visual novels as well. For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36016653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36016653
- ipsum2 3y agoWebtoons (a Korean company) is probably more popular than manga now for this reason.
- justinclift 3y agoIs this the place you're meaning? https://www.webtoons.com/en/ https://www.webtoons.com/en/ If that's the one, it looks like an online manga reading website. There are many of those around. eg mangakatana, reaperscans, mangadex, etc
- Matrixik 3y agoWebtoons is site with official translations, was created by https://naver.com/ https://naver.com/ to combat fan translations (and this fan translations made many of Korean manhwas popular around the world in the first place). Manga are Japanese comics, manhwa are Korean comics, and manhua are Chinese comics. All other sites you mentioned are fan translations (scanlations).
- jasmer 3y agoI think Thai food is just really appropriate for the Western palette, it's way better than the ultra-westernized 'not real Chinese' food of the 1970s, and my experience with Korean is that it's a lot of vinegared/pickled stuff - robust and super healthy but just not as easily engaged as Thai.
- robg 3y agoSurprised that they don’t mention Kalbi as a dish Americans love. It’s just grilled ribs with a sweet sauce and available at Trader Joe’s.