By Everyone’s favorite Korean food blogger Joe McPherson has recently had a good article he wrote published in the Korean edition of Newsweek. In the article Joe makes some good points in regards to the Korean government’s poor attempts to market Korean food to a foreign audience. You can read the full article over at his site.
However, here is what Joe recommends the Korean government do to promote Korean food, which I think is just an ingenious idea:
With impeccable timing to prove my point, reader Edward brings to my attention a post by Food Comma that L.A. has just finished a Korean BBQ festival and contest. I’ve been making the rounds to any Korean who would bother to listen to me that Korea, with all its festivals, really needs a BBQ festival. Can you believe they don’t have any? They have a giant festival for rice cakes but not one for BBQ?
Read the whole thing, but Joe is absolutely right that a Korean BBQ festival has the potential to be huge if it is marketed properly to the foreign and military communities in Korea. As Joe shows in his posting Korean BBQ festivals are even having success in the US. As much as the Korean government likes to push kimchi festivals on foreigners it is Korean BBQ that they should be promoting instead.
9:36 pm on September 4th, 2009 1
Sure it’s a good idea but I think the price of meat in Korea is a huge problem for such kind of festival.
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9:51 pm on September 4th, 2009 2
Zenkimchi took a bunch of other people’s ideas and rolled them up with himself as the author. What a crook.
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September 5th, 2009 at 5:31 am
And what evidence do you have of this?
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September 5th, 2009 at 6:19 am
From Zen:The heart of the problem stems from a top down approach that just doesn’t work in the western world. High officials and businessmen in Korea want to impress only high officials and businessmen in other nations, what I call a yangban-to-yangban approach to marketing.
From Paul Schenk
Honestly, I think the current campaign to globalize Korean food only has resonance in Korea.
The gist of his message (when he is not name dropping) is that traditional food is better then fancy food, and they need to market it better.
Been there done that.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/08/113_12319.html
http://www.korea.net/news/news/newsView.asp?serial_no=20080402012
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2900853
http://www.mysinchew.com/node/14541
By the way zen’s comments like this made me laugh.
“Japan has already cornered that market because its cuisine is relatively bland and needs to be pretty to be appetizing.”
He must only be eating Japanese food in Korea. He clearly is clueless about Japanese food. Or he is pandering to anti-Japanese. Either way, he has lost all my respect as a foodie.
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September 6th, 2009 at 8:07 am
I see no evidence that Joe copied anyone’s ideas from those links you provided and you are actually coming across as being jealous of his success.
September 5th, 2009 at 6:35 am
I think Zen (Joe McPherson) is really just trying to promote himself as an authority on promoting Korean food. It worked for Mike Hurt on nation branding. Mike whined and whined about the Korean government attempt to have a name brand and slogan, and ultimately that landed him a seat on an advisory board.
Joe’s article mentions at least a half a dozen people or organizations who “seek his wisdom”.
* some unnamed restaurant
* New York Times reporter
*a few chefs, food celebrities and reporters from overseas
* the production team for Andrew Zimmern
*My good friend and fellow food writer was in charge of guiding Gourmet Magazine’s “Diary of a Foodie” TV program
The article is 90% promoting Joe, and 10% ripping off other well known ideas that other real cooks and professionals have said.
Meh
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1:20 am on September 5th, 2009 3
A BBQ festival would be a major cultural shift for Korea. Contrary to what recent visitors may believe, kalbi and daeji-gogi are not everyday fair for most Koreans. It’s been customarily associated with celebrations and special occasions. Largely because of the cost, as Dr. Yu mentioned.
Doling out large quantities of meat, willy-nilly, at a public event would be a milestone for Korea.
I am sure the domestic Korean meat industry would love to promote the idea. But, tell them it may require reduced protection for them against imported meat and they would be out in the streets again in a rage.
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September 5th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Well, worth pointing out they do have a Hamburger Festival, and you’ll find spots in Korea—like that festival site and other places in Gangwon-do—that consider themselves “famous” for their beef. I haven’t had the time to read through ZenKimchi’s remarks yet, but something I do recall reading from a few amateurs last year during the Mad Cow fiasco was that Korea ought to brand its beef as a delicacy in order to get some attention abroad, rather than just being a cheap . . . well, in this case an expensive substitute.
Perhaps it’s just a numbers game, who knows, and there isn’t enough cows to feed all those hungry mouths, but I think you’d definitely gain some popularity by exposing the world to Korea’s grilling culture. Sure, you’d have to change it up to suit local tastes, and even though some in the media have railed against doing that, the latest articles in the papers all talk about the need to customize to suit the tastes of non-Koreans.
Anyway, I’m rambling, and even though Korea sucks at hamburgers, it otherwise grills meat pretty well.
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September 5th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Link didn’t show up too well in the previous post, but here’s a little on last year’s festival.
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2009/02/hamburger-festival-in-gangwon-do-this.html
And a big hamburger:
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2009/02/this-is-what-you-missed-at-hamburger.html
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4:05 am on September 5th, 2009 4
Does anyone else find it odd that projects and adds that are supposedly created to attract foreign tourists always seem to be catering to Korean tastes?
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9:42 am on September 5th, 2009 5
Love how even something as innocuous as food writing can bring out the wrath in some folks to tear others down. I usually ignore the ESL Cafe type of comments, but there were some things said that needed to be addressed because, well, when I read them I was surprised that the comments were about me since I don’t recall doing any of that stuff. Silence would also imply that there was some truth there.
About the piece sounding promotional, Newsweek insisted that I not do a straight up critique but make the essay as personal as possible. So it was necessary to throw in the personal experiences with people who are way more influential than me and have more credibility. Originally, I was going to write a friendly “I like kimchi” dancing foreigner bit, but they requested something with more punch, so I dusted off some stuff I had written a while back for a government sponsored magazine that was rejected for being too critical of the government. (Go figure)
As far as stealing other people’s ideas, that’s news, especially since I hadn’t read but maybe one of those cited articles. But it was amusing. I’ve been on these same repetitive talking points since 2006. In fact, a good many of the points in the article were published under my name in another publication before a lot of those cited articles were published. Yeah, it looks like Chef Schenk and I are on the same page (I hadn’t read that article until it was linked here), as are Andrew Salmon, Dan Gray, Jennifer Flinn, Chef Ciaran Hickey, and really, people who just come here and eat. The foreign food writer and culinary professional community here is small. It’s actually a bit of an echo chamber. I’d never heard of having a bunch of people agreeing on the same argument as stealing.
I also consciously try not to promote myself as an authority. I say from the start that I’m a fan. I didn’t grow up with Korean cuisine. It’s still fresh and new to me, and that’s why I write about it. I guess people in the media and such contact me because I’ve been writing about it for a good long time.
And the “bland” Japanese food line–it was a playful jab, throwing a miniscule pebble at Colossus. I think most people got the joke.
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September 5th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Looks like I hit a bullseye.
LOL
I stand by my comments and you did do the ” dancing foreigner” monkey act. I just had to laugh at your “japan sucks” meme. Oh….. it was a joke… Ya..that is how I know you haven’t the nuts to tell the truth.
LOL
I had to laugh at your non “promote myself as an authority” act. Every other senence was about how everone lined up to learn from you.
Lighten up, you and your “tough” buddies need to be a little less thin skinned. Everything I said was true, and you know it.
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September 5th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
The thing is, you may not know the truth, but since I was there, and it was me, I do know the truth. So I guess we can pretty much write off any wingnut conspiracy you spew from here on out.
Chalk one up for conspiracy nuts.
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September 5th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
Um… “dude”, there is no conspiracy, it is just me. I hope you are not an English teacher, because that is just basic vocabulary.
And I don’t need to “be there” (where you are talking about is a mystery), because I was talking about “your” article, not a place. Again ??? seriously WTF? I stand by my comment, that you mostly self promoting, and what little you do say, others (people who have real jobs in the industry) have said it before you, which I supported by giving many examples.
I have read your blog, and I have no issue with it or you, based on your blog. However now you have wrote for real news magazines, you should not be surprised that not everyone is your lapdog, like the dog pound you have brought here attacking me.
Your comments about Japanese cuisine was very telling. I think you are a panderer who will be the foreign dancing monkey, as long as a little bit of won is dangled in front of your nose. I think you do a great disservice to Korean hansik in this regard.
10:03 am on September 5th, 2009 6
or, to take a page from Mike Hurt’s book, where’s your blog, Lordofe2, or your resume of published articles, where you do better than Joe in writing about Korean food?
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September 5th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
So you agree with me, but you want me to prove something to you. Um, no thanks. I don’t care what you think.
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10:36 am on September 5th, 2009 7
Wow – I am honestly sorry Joe had to come on here and redress these comments himself.
If you don’t know Joe personally, or have followed his doings since his arrival in Korea, please allow me to let you know why his voice resonates well with the foreign community in regards to food matters:
Joe came to Korea with little? no? knowledge of the cuisine. But he liked and appreciated food. That was enough to start with. He gave informed, intelligent impressions on dishes that he was trying from a western-palate perspective. This is not the easiest of things to balance – what a ‘foreigner’ considers ‘tasty’ Korean food may not be at all what a Korean would consider ‘good,’ kimchi being the standard for that one.
In the time I knew him there, Joe was always educating himself – he was that rare combination of self-admitted ignorance and honest appreciation that makes for a good critic. If a place served good food, but was overpriced, he called it. If a place served cheap food that was crap food, he called it. if he didn’t know the ingredients or cooking methods that went into something, he endeavored to find out.
You don’t like his writing style? Fine. Don’t agree with his points/opinions? ok. But to say he has basically ’stolen’ all his ideas in the article? Way, way out of line. Take a look through the archives of his websites. Try a search on DESLC for how far his posts stretch back. Get in touch with people who knew him before he moved to Korea, and those who have been witness to his time since moving there.
When you are done with that big, steaming slab o’ humble pie sitting on your plate, why not write us a review of how it went down???
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September 5th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Guys, LordofE2 is auditioning for the role of guest-resident @ss, a role nobody has before seemed to want to play, except sillysally, and that was long ago, and who knows, this might be sillysally returning at long last to jerk our chains some more…
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September 5th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I had the nuts and honesty to answer GI Koreas question. I proved my point. I GOT ER DONE. When I ask USinKorea to back up what he says… he runs. USinKorea, most democrats I respect, but disagree with. YOU, I don’t respect. At least your master OBAMA, will answer questions. You, just throw insults and run away. Grow a pair.
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September 5th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Clueless jackass…
September 5th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Was that what I think it was?? I thought I just heard a dog fart. No really…that’s exactly what it sounded like.
September 5th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
[DELETED FOR PERSONAL ATTACK]
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September 6th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
“clueless jackass”
I leave that to your moral compass.
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7:26 pm on September 5th, 2009 8
Feeding trolls gives them power…
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