The easiest way to win hearts and minds is through the stomach [1]. I don’t know how effective South Korea’s program has been since LA’s Koreatown had tons of kbbq and other korean restaurants before 2009 but Thailand’s Global Thai [2] program has definitely improved the number and quality of Thai options around California.

My understand is they’ve also helped all the restaurants standardize on recipes and core ingredients around a few manufacturers like AROY-D and Maesri so there’s quite a bit of quality control built into the diplomacy.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culinary_diplomacy

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_cuisine#Culinary_diplom...

Quite a few used to also have the Royal Portrait -maybe they still do.

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 of Korea food diplomacy. Im just noting sushi as a really extreme case.

I live in Atlanta and Korean isn’t quite taco-level ubiquity but it’s darn close. Everyone I know under the age of 40 does an h-mart run somewhat regularly and kbbq is a goto group dinner spot.

Did you know salmon sushi in a recent creation. Pacific salmon tends to have parasites so Japanese didn't eat salmon sushi but Norway had salmon which was safer so they promoted it to the Japanese.

Kimchi is actually starting to pop up in surprising places away from city centers (my rural grocery store has some) but it sits around and by the time I got some, it was... not fresh.

Sushi has the benefit of needing to be consumed fresh, except for fake crab which freezes well enough that you can find "sushi" at quite a few out of the way gas stations as well.

Having access to an asian grocery store with fresh bean sprouts, kimchi, freshly made kimbap, good masala blends, all the herbs and so forth is probably the only thing I miss about living in a bigger city.

Kimchi don't have to be "fresh", it's preference.

I guess it could be good in a soup, but personally if it doesn't have at least some crunch I don't care for it. I had a bad experience with kimchi that went off and couldn't even taste any for a year without gagging as a result.

That said, rural folk in this part of the country are more likely to appreciate a fresh kimchi than they would soft stuff; the same goes for sauerkraut (bagged vs canned).

You can get kimchi in a can. It's ok.

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.

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

Okay, I don’t disagree. But “most people 35+ in less-developed parts of the US” is not the same as “most Americans”.

I think literally speaking it is most Americans. By less developed I don't mean rural, just not a major city like LA or NYC.

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.

South Korea has only 40 million people yet has a significant worldwide cultural influence, definitely punching above its weight.

I wonder if China were to implement the same tactics South Korea uses for cultural diplomacy, would the worldwide cultural influence of China reach levels 30x greater than South Korea?

It has started to happen in ASEAN - Chinese Pop Music has really taken off in Vietnam+Thailand (along with the Chinese diaspora in Malaysia+Indonesia+SG).

Chinese media will probably be increasingly exported over the next 20-30 years, and tbf - PRC right now is roughly at the same comparative level economically+social development wise with Taiwan+SK in the 1980s.

Both those countries soft power exports only really took off in the 90s and 2000s respectively, so it's reasonable to assume a similar media push happens in the late 2020s/early 2030s.

That said, I doubt the age+racial/cultural demographic on HN are the type that consume Asian media, so I'll probably be downvoted by China Hawks for the soft power statements and Wumaos for the 1980s statement.

Heavily censored popular media makes it hard to become a cultural powerhouse.

That's true. Korea itself only developed its cultural industry abroad when the government relaxed censorship rules.

That’s crazy, my city alone has more than 1/100 the population!

Edit: 10x to 1/10

Edit 2: 1/10 to 1/100

Are you sure?

Is that a city on Planet Earth?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities

Your city has 400 million people?

Coruscant

The largest city in the world is Tokyo which is about 40M people.

Part of South Korea's rapid reach stems from how Americanized its modern culture is. I am not just talking about global corporations like mcdonalds. It's everything, even the choice of coffee over tea, a rarity for an asian country. Easy for western nations to embrace.

For China, the same game plan wouldn't work not without heavy alterations. It does however have substantial ability to influence those not already heavily Americanized.

Yea no, C-pop is not has good as K-pop. It’s a nonstarter.

Media is horribly neutered because of censorship, but cultural exports like food are seeing increasing traction.

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!

There was 1 Thai restaurant in my smallish hometown. I moved very far away to a large metro and went to some Thai restaurant. Turns out the owners of these restaurants new eachother in Thailand.

Everyone is at most 7 connections away :)

The world is smaller than we assume

What about those uncontacted tribes!?

> Everyone is at most 7 connections away

That is not strictly true, but the world is certainly smaller than we tend to think.

    However, detractors argue that Milgram's experiment did not demonstrate such a link, and the "six degrees" claim has been decried as an "academic urban myth".’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation

The article talks a lot about a similar Thai initiative.

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 most accessible of Thai dishes (i.e. not too spicy), it is not just for tourists, locals eat it too.

As for getting into an argument, I would avoid getting into an argument with people whose national sport is one of the most effective martial arts. But Thai people are usually not the kind of people who get into an argument in the first place.

I think the government is vastly overestimating their role in creating demand for regional food.

> 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.

You only have to look back as far as the "great exchange" when Europeans first visited the Americas to realize many traditional food isn't that old. Gnocchi being made from potatoes and anything tomato based in Italian cooking. Or chili peppers in Indian recipes.

They’ve been doing this since mid 1990s for entertainment. They first targeted the Japanese market and as the industry grew they went global. This has to be one of the best returns for gov’t-led funding and initiative. They played to the strengths of their labor. Also helped that China’s economy absolutely took off during the same time.

There is a graphic showing number of restaurants in selected countries and comparing to other cuisines. According to that there were only 2024 Chinese restaurants in 2009.

I find this very hard to believe. TripAdvisor lists 500+ in Sydney alone!

2024 Korean restaurants in China in 2009

Lol. What does this have to do with Hubspot CRM?

Sales & branding strategy feels pretty related to Hubspot or at least people who might be interested in Hubspot.

South Korea is reaping the dividend of the demographic transition right now. They are where Japan was in the 1980s. They played their cards very well and were able to build up both hard and soft power during the growth years.

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.

> Housing values only depreciate to zero over time.

That's true for every country, it's land that appreciates.

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.

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.

There are plenty of people in other countries who would easily pick South Korea as a better place to live, but never admit it verbally for the reasons you're saying.

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?

Chaebols and unification church.

It’s a really really deeply struggling society and no where near as ideal as projected.

Dunno about that cult, but huge conglomerates like Samsung and LG control their entire economy.

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...

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?

>Crashing population

Why do so many, such as yourself - apparently - believe that population growth is superior to population shrinkage? Are you pushing an immigration agenda or is there some other reason? And when should a population stop growing? Are overpopulation, the crowding of cities, and environmental destruction that result from population growth less worse problems than problems stemming from population shrinkage? And what are the problems resulting from population shrinkage, according to you?

>Massive child suicide rate

All of East Asia is ignorant of mental health issues, in general. It's not a SK-specific problem.

>Terrible dictator families

The people of SK know this is a problem. Of all modern nations, the SK youth has the strongest negative perception of its country's politicians. Perhaps give it some time and the youth of the nation will do away with this problem.

Even with its problems, SK is one of the best countries in the world. The people are a genetic mix of Ghengis Khan's warriors and the above-triple-digit Yayoi people. They are aggressive, intelligent, and surprisingly welcoming to outsiders.

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.

Not just music, Japan have been extremely tight with at least anime and visual novels as well.

For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36016653

Webtoons (a Korean company) is probably more popular than manga now for this reason.

Is this the place you're meaning?

https://www.webtoons.com/en/

If that's the one, it looks like an online manga reading website. There are many of those around. eg mangakatana, reaperscans, mangadex, etc

Webtoons is site with official translations, was created by https://naver.com/ to combat fan translations (and this fan translations made many of Korean manhwas popular around the world in the first place). Manga are Japanese comics, manhwa are Korean comics, and manhua are Chinese comics.

All other sites you mentioned are fan translations (scanlations).

Cool, thanks for clarifying. :)

I think Thai food is just really appropriate for the Western palette, it's way better than the ultra-westernized 'not real Chinese' food of the 1970s, and my experience with Korean is that it's a lot of vinegared/pickled stuff - robust and super healthy but just not as easily engaged as Thai.

Surprised that they don’t mention Kalbi as a dish Americans love. It’s just grilled ribs with a sweet sauce and available at Trader Joe’s.

It’s over for us Koreans when westerners realize that Kimchi is better consumed as bar nibbles.