How not to globalize Korean food

By Michael Breen

After two years of strategizing about how to turn Korean cuisine into a global favorite, the government has decided to open a restaurant in Manhattan.

This 5 billion-won project is not just one tactic among many, but a core strategy. ``We’ll put significant emphasis on the flagship restaurant as it is highlighted as a central measure of our ‘hansik’ (Korean food) globalization plan next year,” said an official at the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries quoted in this paper.

I’ve tried hard before committing fingers to keyboard, but I can think of only one good thing to say about this idea. That is, that in the build-it-and-they-will-come era in which we live in Korea, this initiative will give the appearance of action to all important critics in the National Assembly and elsewhere.

This argument, of course, is only relevant to a handful of people. From every other perspective this plan is ridiculous.

First of all, Korean cuisine is going to be globalized by people around the world who like it and who will continue to adapt it to suit their tastes. As the first fans start to sing its praises, so it will spread. It is not going to be globalized by the Korean government. Its role is as the choirmaster, marketing, promoting, sponsoring and supporting.

Second, the whole idea behind the globalization of the cuisine is to raise the national brand of Korea. The commercial pay-off is in tourism and all that comes with greater positive awareness. You don’t raise the national brand by having the government march into a private sector field.

Yes, North Korea has a few state-owned restaurants in foreign countries and, yes, the Chinese government tried it some years back. But we’re not as into state control in the same way as they are.

Korea is a ``dirigiste” state, which means that government policies, especially in matters concerning foreigners, are subordinated to economic interest. (There is no involvement, for example, in global human rights issues because such meddling in other countries can only lead to lost business contracts). But the rest of the world doesn’t really know this and, if they did, it would not reflect well on Korea.

Third, the implicit message behind the decision to have a state-run restaurant in New York is that the 20 or so restaurants already there are not good enough. Thus, in the first major step in the globalization policy, the government will successfully piss off and even damage the business of the very people it should be encouraging. We need tens of thousands of Korean restaurants around the world and the strategy should be to support and encourage overseas Koreans to open them, not elbow them aside, like some yokel who thinks he can do things better.

The Manhattan restaurant no doubt will be high-end ``haute hansik.” As a strategy for spreading the gospel of Korean food, this is a loser from the start. No haute cuisine starts haute. You can have your high-end version of Korean food, but the government role in this is not to run the restaurants.

That makes as much sense as a plan to send government officials to be waiters in Korean restaurants around the world.

I imagine the main argument in favor of opening state-run restaurants _ plural because if the New York venture makes money, others will open in other big cities ― is that they allow the government to set standards and thereby control Korean cuisine as it globalizes.

This is a big mistake both from a national image point of view, because it reflects an anal, controlling mindset. It’s also wrong from a hansik globalizing strategy point of view. The hansik-ness of hansik lies in the philosophy, if you like, and the basic concepts, such as, for example, wrapping meat, rice and a bit of whatever else you fancy in a lettuce leaf. From this point, recipes and ingredients can evolve where human creativity takes them.

This is what happens with other food. Take Chinese cuisine, for example. The most popular item in Chinese restaurants in Korea is ``jajangmyeon.” This noodle dish doesn’t even exist in China. Chinese tourists who have heard about it actually go to Chinese restaurants here to try it.

Imagine the reaction in Korea if the Beijing government were to step in and declare it to be not a Chinese cuisine. They’d get the middle finger from Koreans, which is precisely what this plan to open a state-run restaurant in Manhattan should get.

Michael Breen is an author, former foreign correspondent and the chairman of Insight Communications, a public relations consulting company. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.

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