Why isn't Korean food popular in the US?

[Cusina]

Well, my corner of northeastern Wisconsin, there is a very good Korean/sushi place. Hands down the busiest and most popular "ethnic" restaurant in a pretty white bread town. The staff appear to my less than trained eye to be Korean and they are very polite and friendly. Many of the menu items seem to be authentic as well. I used to go out for good Korean in Chicago, though it was with a Korean friend and I couldn't even begin to tell you where the places were. The signs were not in English. I was along for the very enjoyable ride.

This flatlander white girl loves Korean. It sounds like I'm in the minority though. What a shame.

[Pan]

I respect your remarks, jschyun, because you are Korean-American. But that said, I haven't been treated rudely at any Korean restaurant in New York. I've found the level of politeness pretty much the same as you can normally expect from New Yorkers.

[jschyun]

I've found the level of politeness pretty much the same as you can normally expect from New Yorkers.

Hehe. Uh, no comment.

Actually, rereading my comments I realize I sounded a bit harsh. It was never my intention to harp on Koreans. Of course, there are some friendly Korean people.

But so many times I have seen things like the Korean grocery manager who tells his employee (usually son or daughter) to follow the "black skinned guy", or the rude waitress who becomes more and more irritated at the white guy who is trying to figure out how to order.

My point was, I was thinking, this could be a reason for Korean restaurants not being "accessible".

In New York, there is a good sized community of Koreans, but nowhere near the size the Los Angeles/Orange County Korean community. Perhaps there, you have to be polite to survive.

[Pan]

jschyun, I think that the customer's relationship with management is different in a restaurant than in a grocery store. Grocery store owners are very worried about theft, and I doubt restaurant employees are nearly as concerned about that, in spite of the stories one reads about the theft of fine silverware and so forth. There have been times when I've been conscious that Koreans can behave in a way I and most other Americans would tend to consider rude (and which I understand is just a cultural difference), but those times haven't been at restaurants. And Korean colleagues of mine aren't rude at all, but very nice.

But I do think, too, that the get-right-to-the-point attitude of New Yorkers in general probably makes it easier for Koreans to fit in here than, say, the South, where they'd have to learn how to say "Hi, how are ya!" to every stranger who stands on line to buy something. Perhaps in laid-back Southern California, it's also harder for Koreans to fit in than here. In New York, "Five dollar" is a fine thing for the checkout guy to say, and not rude if not said in a very impatient tone of voice.

[jhlurie]

Koreans also seem to have less of a culture gap between the mother country and their communities here in the U.S. This KEEPS them insular.

I actually think the situation might be a bit different in the case of former North Koreans who fled that country (as opposed to South Koreans). Seems to me they might actually be more ripe for westernization, despite coming from a more restrictive society. Well, maybe "Americanization" would be a more accurate word, since South Korea operates like a Western country, in some respects.

[jschyun]

jschyun, I think that the customer's relationship with management is different in a restaurant than in a grocery store. Grocery store owners are very worried about theft, and I doubt restaurant employees are nearly as concerned about that, in spite of the stories one reads about the theft of fine silverware and so forth. There have been times when I've been conscious that Koreans can behave in a way I and most other Americans would tend to consider rude (and which I understand is just a cultural difference), but those times haven't been at restaurants. And Korean colleagues of mine aren't rude at all, but very nice.

But I do think, too, that the get-right-to-the-point attitude of New Yorkers in general probably makes it easier for Koreans to fit in here than, say, the South, where they'd have to learn how to say "Hi, how are ya!" to every stranger who stands on line to buy something. Perhaps in laid-back Southern California, it's also harder for Koreans to fit in than here. In New York, "Five dollar" is a fine thing for the checkout guy to say, and not rude if not said in a very impatient tone of voice.

I work, live with, eat with, shop with Korean people all the time, Korean speakers and non. Yes, of course there are nice Korean people. And yes, there are bad people and there are good people, in any culture.

I think it's great you've had good experiences. But I think I'm talking about a deeper problem, one that is not appropriate for this forum.

I have never, in all the time I have shopped in little and big Chinese and Japanese markets, ever seen any management follow anyone. Of course, I don't speak Chinese or Japanese so this is biased. I think you mistook me to mean that I meant restaurant owners are also worried about theft. I guess I shouldn't have used that example, because it seems to have only confused the reader.

My apologies.

[Pan]

I don't think you have a thing to apologize for, and I do understand the problem you're alluding to. I agree that it's beyond the scope of this thread, but I think that issues in customer/grocery store-employee relations are topical for this site. By default, I suppose such a discussion, which we should handle carefully if we have it, would belong in General Food Topics.

[fresco]

It may be largely a timing issue. If Koreans had arrived in large numbers in North America at the turn of the century, or before, as Italians, Chinese and others did, millions of people here would probably be saying every night, "Let's order Korean."

Koreans are not, in my experience, more insular than any other group of people new to a country.

[Comfort Me]

There are several fine Korean restaurants here in Chicago -- I heard another reviewed on the tube just the other day. I love Korean food, and I always choose a Korean restaurant for dinner on New Year's day.

I think the bigggest obstacle to the popularization of Korean food is language, not flavor. My six year old eats kim chee, chopchae, tofujigae, monuguk, etc. But we never go to a Korean restaurant without friends who are Korean. The one time we went alone was a disaster -- mostly because of the language thing.

If Korean restaurants invested a little money into having menu's and descriptions translated well, I think it would quickly reflect in their bottom line. I know I would go more often.

[skchai]

Not sure what to say about all this. It's hard enough to make generalizations about the sources of very specific institutional practices, and even harder to link these practices to any notion of national culture and internal attitudes.

That being said, I think that there probably isn't one single cause that predominates in the fact that Korean restaurants have not attained. Culture may have something to do with it, but in my mind not the main reason.

(1) I agree with fresco that the timing and pattern of Korean immigration into the U.S. has something to do with it. The vast majority of those running the type of Korean restaurant described above are first-generation immigrants, something that is untrue for Chinese, Mexican, or Japanese restaurants (at least those that are run Japanese-Americans, not Korean-Americans). These first-generaiton immigrants often lack language skills and awareness of American popular culture, hence the fact that attempts at translation lead to malapropisms that simply create more confusion.

Furthermore, while Korean immigration has been fairly recent, it has been fairly concentrated, hence Korean restaurant owners have been able to depend on other immigrants for their custom, reducing their need to promote their restaurants to other communities, as I believe was mentioned earlier. In those parts of the country where there are few other Korean immigrants, Korean restaurant owners make much more of an effort to make their food accessible - indeed, many of the Korean restaurants in these areas double as Japanese or Chinese restaurants in order to bring in customers.

Even the issue of bigotry that jschyun rightly brought up can at least in part be attributed to the recency of immigration. The fact is that first-generation immigrants, particularly those who arrive from relatively homogenous societies, often have not been trained to censor out their more egregious feelings of ethnic prejudice. I believe this is equally likely to be true for Japanese or Chinese of the same generation and recency of arrival as the Koreans that you are referring to. However, since there are fewer of them, the problem is not as great. I don't see nearly the level of open bigotry among second-generations as among first-generations. Even younger first-generations from Seoul are more tolerant, since awareness of problem of dealing with a multicultural environment is beginning to filter into the urban educational system in Korea.

One may question the validity of my analysis when one looks at other types of ethnic restaurants, notably Indian restaurants. However, these are pretty exceptional cases. For the vast majority of Indian-Americans, the language barrier is hardly a problem at all, since most speak English as fluently or more fluently (depending on the criteria that you use) than most native-born Americans. Moreover, since the population of Indian immigrants has for the most part been less concentrated than those of Koreans, there was a greater need to reach out to a wider customer base.

One will only be able to really the "immigrant story" argument when second and third-generation Korean-Americans start running Korean restaurants. However, based upon the few examples of which I'm aware, they are usually designed to be much more accessible to the larger population than the average Korean restaurant. Moreover, whatever the age or generation, I haven't met a Korean restauranter who wasn't visibly happy when foreign guests that I brought enjoyed the food he or she cooked - perhaps only the degree of suprise differed. Therefore, I think the main difference between generations is less a matter of desire to popularize Korean food and more a matter of perceived ability or need.

(2) Even if the immigration factor is a significant cause of the phenomenon we've been discussing, this does not eliminate the possibility that other cultural factors may be exacerbating the problem.

To investigate this, we probably need to look in part at eating habits of Koreans in their home country. One noticeable fact is that, while South Korea has been a middle to high-income country for about twenty years, there were until about ten years ago very, very few restaurants in Seoul that did not fit into one of four ethnic categories: Korean, Japanese, Chinese and "Western". The last category could be divided into two subcategories: "Continental", the Escoffier-era haute cuisine served in three-star hotels, and "Light Western Food" (kyeongyangshik), a menu of "om-rice", "hash rice", curry rice, croquette, and tonkatsu - interpretations of Western food acquired from the Japanese during the colonial era. Indeed, the relative lack of diversity was noticeable even in comparison with other Asian cities at roughly the same level of economic development, such as Taipei or Bangkok, much less Singapore or Hong Kong.

A number of reasons could plausibly be given for this, including some notion of a "hermit-like" Korean culture that avoided all unnecessary foreign influences. While it's very hard to measure whether such a culture exists, this relative absence of foreign restaurants might be used as a proxy to indicate that Koreans are naturally insular in their own eating habits, hence unlikely to want outsiders to explore their cuisine as well. However, I find it more likely that the relative insularity was more a result of political factors than cultural ones (though admittedly these, too, may often be intertwined). During the period of military dictatorship, conspicuous consumption of all kinds was highly discouraged and even legally suppressed, including such "frivolities" as gourmandism and culinary experimentation. The high-class Western restaurants at hotels were tolerated as a necessary for entertaining foreign dignitaries.

Since the democratization of South Korean societies beginning in the late 1980s, there have been incredibly rapid changes in various areas of popular culture. Perhaps the most notable areas are music and films, where in about 10 years, Korean pop culture has gone from being seen as among the most conservative and closed in Asia, to perhaps the most "westernized" (take this with a grain of salt) and experimental. This in turn has led to the recent "Korea boom" in pop culture throughout East Asia. The same is true of food - Seoul is now a fairly cosmopolitan city for eating, which a plethora of Vietnamese, Thai, and Indian places to complement the existing big four cuisines. While many are still congregated in the trendy Kangnam (south of the Han River) area, they are also moving into downtown as well as many of the bedroom suburbs cropping further south of the city. Furthermore, the last time I was there (last year), East-West "fusion" seemed to have become a buzzword of the moment, with even the humblest neighborhood eatery boasting of "fusion" meals.

So overall, it's hard for me to agree that Korean culture in some holistic, relatively immutable sense is a major obstacle to the popularization of Korean cuisine in the U.S. or the openness of Korean cuisine to outside influences. Check back in another decade or so, things could be very different!

[chengb02]

I think Korean food is definitely growing in popularity in the US. The problem is that like a lot of ethnic restaurants, the service at Korean places is often spotty, the restaurants are focused in an ethnic neighborhood, and the menus lack a lot of descriptions and usually use the Korean names. This sets up a very unwelcoming environment to many non-Koreans. It is increasingly common to see Korean influenced dishes, especially Kalbi ribs, in non-Korean restaurants. I also know of some attempts in Chicago (Jinju) and other cities where "trendy" Korean restaurants have opened in attempt to attract a new kind of customer.