Global interests in Korean food varying

By Kang Seung-woo

Korean food captivating people around the world is becoming varied, according to a study by the Seoul Tourism Organization (STO), Tuesday.

Samgyeopsal, or grilled pork belly / gettyimagesbank

The STO conducted a trend survey recently on what kinds of Korean food people from 10 major inbound countries were interested in through global search engines such as Google, China's Baidu and Russia's Yandex, and each country came up with different dishes.

The 10 were China, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Russia and the United States.

The most-searched keyword regarding Korean food in the Philippines was samgyeopsal, bacon-like sliced pork belly, while Vietnamese were most interested in bibimbap, rice mixed with vegetables.

Interestingly, dried filefish fillet was a popular keyword in Taiwan, and soju, a distilled rice beverage, was gaining recognition in Thailand.

The presence of Korean food is growing around the world, sparked by the growing popularity of Korean dramas and movies, where characters are often seen eating.

Other than food, most-searched keywords among foreigners were K-pop boy band BTS and taekwondo.

Among some unexpected search words, Taiwanese were interested in singer Nilo, webtoon “True Beauty” and bobbed hair, while Nonhyeon-dong, a district of southern Seoul, was a popular keyword in Thailand and handwritten letters were popular in Hong Kong.

The number of searches about tourism in Korea and Seoul by people of those countries steadily increased over the past three years from 25 million in 2016 to 33 million in 2018, but it did not lead to the growth of inbound tourists as 14 million people visited here in 2016, but the number decreased to 12 million last year.

The tourism organization said the main purpose of searches about Korea was to obtain information on traveling to Korea, accounting for 50.4 percent.