These days, foreign food has become a craze, with the release of foods using special foreign spices such as Mara ramen and Mara gimbap. Even college students enjoy eating foreign foods, as can be seen by the “maratang” culture on college campuses. Also, you can often see people consuming unusual foreign foods on TV and YouTube. Through media exposure, interest in foreign food has been passed on to the Korean people and currently foreign food is popular. Why are people so interested in foreign food? To answer this question, the Pharos will investigate the culture of foreign food.

 People enjoy eating foreign food as well as Korean food. Pasta and hamburgers are widely distributed through franchises and are also promoted in advertisements, making them very familiar to people. Sandwiches are also easy to buy at brand name stores like “SUBWAY,” so we can have shorter and simpler meals. In addition, Chinese cuisine has recently become the hot topic in Korea. A variety of foods from China, including Chinese cellophane noodles, “bunmoja,” black sugar bubble tea and “Hung Rui Chen” sandwiches, are coming into our culture. Taiwan’s black sugar bubble tea brand “Jenjudan” is opening shops all over the country and introducing its teas to people. People are so enthusiastic about the drink that they have to wait two hours to get black sugar bubble tea. Also, there are many stores specializing in Indian food. Indian-style sauce and spices are not easily accessible in Korea, so people keep wanting to eat them. These characteristics stimulate people’s curiosity and make them want to try the new foods.

 Why have foreign foods been so popular in Korea? There are two major reasons. The first reason is related to the development of social media. As a powerful nation in IT, social media has spread quickly in South Korea. Through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Blog and YouTube, people can directly or indirectly advertise contents by posting. Bloggers and celebrities began to post photos and clips of foreign foods, which led followers or watchers to visit the same restaurants. This formed a self-reinforcing circuit. Also, powerful companies and restaurants paid to popular streamers to advertise their offerings, or they made their own channels to advertise themselves. As we are living in a world flooded with information, people not only learned about foreign foods but also went into the foreign food business. The second reason pertains to people’s fascination with things that are different. People tend to be intrigued by new things easily. To escape from home meals, people want to try new food. So This is especially common among the youth generation, who have smartphones, and can search for good restaurants in a couple of minutes. This means accessibility has been greatly improved. Foreign foods have quickly invaded in our culture. Since they are charming, people love to try more and more of them. Then, what do students in Kyonggi University think about foreign foods?

 All respondents answered that they enjoy eating foreign foods. Their favorite kinds of foods are Japanese (sushi and ramen), Chinese (Maratang and Ram stick), and Western (pizza and pasta). The most common answers for how they heard about foreign foods were “because restaurants are nearby” (31%), “Social media” (23%), and “recommendation from others” (23%). Students replied to the question “Why do you enjoy foreign foods?” by answering “new taste different from Korean” (38%). The next most common answer was “kept recalling the taste” (31%). Students replied to the question “Why do you think foreign foods have become popular?” by choosing “novel taste and image” (38%), “impact of social media” (31%), and “trend” (23%). The results of the survey support the theories given above. Specifically, people get information about foreign foods through social media and are encouraged to try them by their novelty.