language matters. the way you name things matters.
stop putting korean food adjacent to japanese food — and two other things.
one.
on friday, eater posts an article about how korean american restaurants in nyc, post-paradise, are creating versions of jjapaguri that non-koreans are eating up. in the article, every person is referred to by her/his surname, except for bong joonho, who is casually referred to as “joon ho.”
this gets under my skin more than i expect, and i spend the rest of the day with this thing bothering me more and more. i do that thing where i try to talk myself down from it by telling myself it’s not that a big a deal — except it’s not not a big deal either. getting someone’s name right is a basic courtesy, and you could interpret eater’s use of “joon ho” as a weirdly intentional choice or as ignorance, plain and simple.
both are problematic, the former because it’s rude as hell, made even worse by the fact that every other person in the article is called by surname. it’s doubly so because, hi, korean culture is one of hierarchy — you do not first-name anyone unless you are older or of the same age or friends, in a situation where it has been mutually established that it is acceptable to call each other by first name. koreans tend to call people by titles — bong joon ho would be called 감독님 (gamdoknim), chefs as 셰프님 (chef-nim), your seniors at school or at work as 선배님 (sunbaenim). even if you want to strip away the cultural aspect, american journalism doesn’t call people by their first name.
which makes me think it was ignorance, plain and simple. no one stopped to consider how korean names work, that surnames come first, so bong would be his surname.
why does this matter? because getting someone’s fucking name right is basic courtesy and professionalism. publications have been quick to capitalize on parasite’s popularity, assigning stories about everything from the food to the architecture to the social points bong is trying to make, and the unwillingness to get bong’s name right speaks volumes to the priorities of these publications. the fact that the mistake makes it into publication speaks to who is — or, more importantly, who is not — in these rooms.
the irony of this, though, is that eater has a fair number of asian americans on staff.
(for the record, i find it hilarious and awesome that korean americans are capitalizing over the west’s fascination with chapaguri. exploit that!)
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two.
i have a fair amount of unease when it comes to these pieces of korean culture that pick up a lot of traction in the west.
while i’m thrilled that parasite has been so loved and lauded and that the literary world lost its shit over han kang’s the vegetarian in 2016, there’s an exotification and Othering under all this high praise and adoration that bother me. both parasite and the vegetarian are very korean works of art, which isn’t to say that they can’t have global appeal — they can; the beauty of story-telling is being able to share in the fundamental universality of the human experience.
it’s the very one-ness of parasite and the vegetarian that demonstrate this exotification and Othering. these two pieces of media are considered exceptions to the rule, and they’re treated as phenomena that somehow exist outside a culture, like they didn’t come from long, rich histories of cinema and literature. somehow, this showering of western praise is meant to give them some kind of validation that elevates them and gives them that other work doesn’t have or deserve.
it’s not to say that everyone who enjoys something from another culture has to sit down and do intensive research on that culture’s history, etcetera. there does, however, need to be some show of awareness, some effort to contextualize, instead of this fawning frenzy where the west simply imprints its own interpretation and takaways on pieces of work that have deep cultural meaning otherwise. basically, it more or less comes down to commodification, i would argue, to wanting to consume something that has some kind of clout and use it to add legitimacy or status to oneself.
this applies to food as well.
an example: yesterday, a friend and i go to eat brunch at nowon, a recently-opened korean american restaurant in the east village. chef jae s. lee is doing creative, thoughtful riffs on korean food, like his dry jjambbong, which retains everything that is familiar about a hot bowl of spicy jjambbong but removes the broth, removes the noodles, limits the seafood to prawns, adds rice cakes, making something new and creative. my friend and i are there to eat his big bird sando, though, a fried chicken sandwich that is smothered in a gochujang-based sauce and topped with jalapeños pickled the korean way, in soy sauce, which brings sweetness and tempers the spice.
as we’re eating, i’m distracted by a man at another table who’s carrying plates of food outside, crossing the street, and standing in front of a brown wall directly by the entrance of a residential building. i wonder out loud what the hell he’s doing, and my friend replies that he’s a food influencer, so he’s probably taking photos. i can’t get over this the entire meal; he does this maybe three or four times — takes the plate of food outside, crosses! the! street!, presumably takes photos before bringing the food back for his family to eat. they pack up most of the meal to go. i don’t know if they pay for it. the chef comes by occasionally to check on them.
i suppose it’s good marketing, but i find the whole thing absurd and ridiculous. it’s no secret i have little patience or regard for influencers and find their content generally pretty empty, shallow, and pointless because influencers — the hugely successful ones at least — don’t offer opinions or original thoughts. to give an opinion is potentially to isolate a swath of people, which would impact their numbers, which would impact their income.
anyway, all this takes me down a thought spiral because i understand that restaurants are first and foremost a business and they need to get butts in seats. this influencer coming in, taking photos, and sharing them on social media might help get butts into seats. i tend to think the influence influencers actually have is more limited than we like to think; i did some influencer marketing at my old job; and getting giant names to share our products didn’t ever produce significant lift, though i suppose i can’t speak to food, which might be different.
that, in turn, makes me think about deliciousness. is it enough if people eat at restaurants like nowon, like kawi, because they find the food delicious if that’s all there is? is it enough to get white people to enjoy our food without challenging why they like it, if this is the extent of their regard for asian people? because white people are plenty happy to eat our food, watch our dramas, stan our k-pop idols without seeing us as humans deserving of basic respect and decency, much less understanding where this food, this film, this literature comes from.
this is why it’s hugely important to me that people understand why eunjo park’s food at kawi is so wildly exciting. it matters. she’s not cooking in a vacuum — none of these korean american chefs in new york city is, and what they’re doing, what they’re cooking and how they’re claiming their food, that matters. that matters a lot.
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three.
the next person who calls kimbap korean sushi is getting hit in the face.
i’m joking (mostly), but i really am done with korean food constantly being defined adjacent to japanese food. kimbap is korean sushi, doenjang is korean miso, hwe is korean sashimi, and so on and so forth. it’s really tiring and irritating because, for one, they’re two different cuisines. for another, japan occupied korea from essentially from 1876 to 1945, though formal annexation occurred in 1905 with formal occupation in 1910. japan’s annexation of korea was different from japan’s imperial campaign elsewhere in asia because japan tried actively to erase korean language and culture and subsume korea, claiming that koreans were really japanese — but really not because koreans were barely second-rate. the history of zainichi koreans in japan is ugly, brutal, and ongoing.
japan illegalized the korean language, forced koreans to take japanese names and observe japanese rituals, and stole hundreds of artifacts, while destroying korean palaces and dismantling the korean monarchy. hell, japan even fucked up korea’s rice. they brutally suppressed rebellions. they took young women from korea, as well as china, the philippines, vietnam, and force them into sexual slavery for their soldiers. they brought over scholars and writers to japan, tried to claim them as their own.
none of this is that far removed from us in history. my grandparents grew up during the occupation; they spoke fluent japanese; and my grandfather spent a fair amount of his younger life in japan. the effects of japan’s imperial campaign linger — some of these comfort women are still alive today, protesting weekly for japan to recognize them, to apologize, as japan tries instead to erase comfort women from its history, protests US textbook publishers for including that sordid history, petitions to remove statues in asian diasporic communities that commemorate these women. japan has not returned all the artifacts it took from korea.
the language we use to define something matters, and examining and understanding the context of something matters. korean food as we know it today came from extreme scarcity brought on by occupation and war, and that can’t be ignored or set aside, just so white people can have an easy point of reference (because of the west’s fetishization of japan, which is exotifying, Othering, and, at its heart, racist, let’s be real).
beyond that, it comes down to something as simple as respect. korean american chefs are cooking exciting, innovative food all over the city, and it’s about time language caught up. it’s not acceptable to continue placing korean food adjacent to japanese food — it never should have been — and korean food should be given its due place in the ways we speak about it.
korean food deserves to stand on its own.
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