Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The $40M bet that made South Korea a food and cultural power

blog.hubspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 72 posts

Re: The $40M bet that made South Korea a food and cultural power

#51

Post by tsunamifury »

thegrim33 wrote: post #49
tsunamifury wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crashing population, massive child suicide rate, terrible dictator families running the nation and an outright cult controlling even more… I really don’t think we should hold SK up for anything other than what aggressive capitalism does to a society. Kills it off.

Fairly ironic making a comment about cults when you're coming here to proselytize the political/social ideology your echo chamber (cult) has convinced you is the truth.

What? These are all statistics you can look up. Korea has the worst child suicide rate and the fastest dropping population in the world. It’s insane! What are you talking about echo chamber?

Re: The $40M bet that made South Korea a food and cultural power

#52

Post by thegaulofthem »

solarmist wrote: post #47
thegaulofthem wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only we had an aggressively socialist nation with a comparable demographic to compare to. Shame there isn’t an East Korea we could compare with and against.

North Korea was screwed the second they were divided. They have terrible geography for sustaining a country.

It’s a real shame what the mountain ranges and cold weather did to the North Korean people. Perhaps they could learn from Switzerland and casually handle sketchy wealth.

Re: The $40M bet that made South Korea a food and cultural power

#53

Post by genmud »

nonethewiser wrote: post #3

This 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…

Kimchi is ironically one of the few cabbage based garnishes I actually enjoy. Compared to something like sauerkraut, it has a reasonably pleasant texture, no offputting odor and the combination of spicy + salty works very well.

It would probably be better to compare kimchi with wasabi or sauerkraut though.

Re: The $40M bet that made South Korea a food and cultural power

#54

Post by throw0101b »

Jiro wrote: post #29

For k-pop, Japan has notoriously been very tight with licensing restrictions on music. That allowed Korea to leap ahead.

Not 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.

Re: The $40M bet that made South Korea a food and cultural power

#55

Post by School-Cotton »

GuB-42 wrote: post #22
givemeethekeys wrote: post #5

Another 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!

It is mentioned in the article, saying that "Thailand was the first country to launch a formal gastrodiplomacy plan with its 2002 Global Thai campaign." About Thai food, it is interesting to note that Pad Thai, often considered to be the national dish, was in fact made for that purpose. Originating from the mid 20th century, it is hardly traditional. That doesn't make it less delicious, and while it is one of the mos…

> Originating from the mid 20th century, it is hardly traditional

Why can’t something 70 years old be traditional? Most “traditional” things aren’t as old as people imagine, anyway.

Re: The $40M bet that made South Korea a food and cultural power

#56

Post by School-Cotton »

nonethewiser wrote: post #3

This 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…

I can assure you that sushi was not weird to most Americans 10 years ago. Maybe 40 years.

Re: The $40M bet that made South Korea a food and cultural power

#57

Post by opportune »

nonethewiser wrote: post #3

This 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…

I think Kimchi will get there, many major supermarkets like Safeway are beginning to stock it.

Often their SKUs, IME, are overpriced and low quality, because they market it as a health food and try too hard to cater to that niche, so it’s not spicy or salty enough and lacks fish sauce. You’re still way better off going to an Asian grocery store for it.

But eventually they’ll figure out they can just sell the good stuff… It’s a great snack and Americans are already familiar enough with eg dill pickles and sauerkraut that I think we’ll eventually embrace real Kimchi.

Re: The $40M bet that made South Korea a food and cultural power

#58

Post by opportune »

School-Cotton wrote: post #56
nonethewiser wrote: post #3

This 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…

I can assure you that sushi was not weird to most Americans 10 years ago. Maybe 40 years.

It was not weird to urban yuppies but it has made tremendous inroads in the middle-aged suburban/middle-America demographic.

I come from a mid sized city in a less developed part of the US and sushi is much more available there now than 10 years ago. And yes 10 years ago most people 35+ in that area found it strange

Re: The $40M bet that made South Korea a food and cultural power

#59

Post by tuatoru »

gtop3 wrote: post #43
tsunamifury wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crashing population, massive child suicide rate, terrible dictator families running the nation and an outright cult controlling even more… I really don’t think we should hold SK up for anything other than what aggressive capitalism does to a society. Kills it off.

My familiarity with SK is minimal, but I am interested by part of your comment and would like to study more. What is the name of the cult you are referring to?

Assuming you want information on the other part as well, Korea's working age population is peaking right now, and about to decline steeply[1].

1. https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/20-69...

Re: The $40M bet that made South Korea a food and cultural power

#60

Post by clove »

Mistletoe wrote: post #34
alberth wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully they don’t experience Japans “Lost Decades”, where since ~1991, economically the national has stagnated. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades

Hopefully 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?location... US net migration is declining drastically also. https://econofact.org/the-decline-in-u-s-net-migration

Japan'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.

Post reply on HN