Korean foods get makeover abroad

On left, a Vietnamese influencer eats a bowl of ggultteok cereal on TikTok. At top right, a YouTuber picks up a tornado cucumber. In the bottom right, Marks & Spencer's new tteokbokki products have excluded red hot pepper paste. Screenshots from TikTok, YouTube, Marks & Spencer homepage

New food trends happening outside the country are transforming familiar Korean foods in ways almost unheard of among local Koreans.

The fads have spread online among people around the world — and back to Korea — even entering into mass production overseas in some cases. Thanks to their global popularity, Korean food has been intriguing global foodies, some of whom have begun experimenting with the foods to come up with creative and outrageous fusions.

Rice cakes have been a big part of Korean food tradition and history for centuries. There are more than 100 different kinds. Yet, when someone suggests they could be eaten like a bowl of cereal, no rice cake expert in Korea would admit the idea sounded familiar.

On TikTok, YouTube and other social media platforms, ggultteok cereal has become one of the buzzwords linked to the food challenge hashtag. It is a bowl of "ggulddeok," a ball-shaped rice cake with sugary water inside, dipped in milk. People in multiple videos are seen taking a spoonful and praising the pairing.

There are already over 200 posts about ggultteok on TikTok. A Vietnamese influencer’s video has raked in over 400,000 hits showing herself making a bowl of it and slurping it.

Ggultteok cereal’s popularity stems from Korea's recent increase in exports of rice cakes and other rice-based food products. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, its exports from January to October amounted to $250 million, a 40 percent year-on-year jump.

Korean-style spicy cucumber salads have also spawned a new variation that has hardly been witnessed among Koreans before. Called “tornado cucumber,” it takes extra effort with an intricate cutting process — more like artwork — to make the whole cucumber extend like a spring so that it not only tastes good but is also visually worthy of going viral. The result is a shape with much more complexity than the vegetable is known for.

While cucumber salads already have variations across different nations including China, tornado cucumber stuck to unique Korean recipe using hot red pepper powder and other spicy ingredients.

In the United Kingdom, tteokbokki has taken a twisted level by replacing its key ingredient of red pepper paste sauce with alternatives. Online shopping platform Marks and Spencer in October introduced Sweet & Spicy Tteokbokki for its Taste of Asia category. It chose tomato juice, miso paste, soybean paste and katsu sauce over the dish's traditional additives.

Appreciation for another Korean ingredient has advanced to creating a new kind of liquor in the U.K. Using Yondu, a brand for a lineup of bean extract-based liquid condiment by Sempio, creative thinkers have concocted new “umami (or yummy) cocktails.” Some experts have taken further steps by turning kimchi into a signature color for new cocktails.

Korean food industry experts said that these are examples of how traditional Korean foods are becoming increasingly localized in different countries. “New and diverse K-foods or recipes using the foods will emerge in the coming years,” one of the experts said. He added these new culinary works are the outcomes of “modisumers,” a compound of “modify” and “consumers.”