Food for Thought – Western Food in Korea: The First Wave

The first chance I had, I checked out the Taco Bell. There were a few foreigners inside including the Taco Salad Lady from the langauge institute as well as a few curious Koreans, mostly females. There was a time (and perhaps still a little true) when most of the people you would see in a fast food joint were Korean females. I always used to think that your typical Korean male feared giving into any fast food temptation because it went against the grain of their manliness.

To be sure, there were many times when my students and I went out for lunch or dinner, the females always wanted to try out something new whereas the male students only wanted Korean food. One time, when my students took me to Wendy’s, some of the male students did not want to eat anything. However, after those of us who had ordered food finished eating, one of the older males announced that we were all going to have Chinese noodles. Guess he must have thought that “fast food” was not really food at all, but more of a snack.

I guess a lot had to do with people’s perceptions of “western food,” after all, you were talking about a time when there were only McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, as Korea’s answer to fast food, Lotteria. Maybe that explains why the folks at Taco Bell went to great lengths to indoctrinate patrons on the art of eating a taco. That’s right. The paper place mats in the trays came with instructions (in Korean and with illustrations) on the proper way to eat a taco. Fair enough. If you are going to introduce a new kind of fast food into the Korean market you want to make sure that people know how to eat it. Sadly, Taco Bell did not last long in Korea. There used to be one over near the Ewha Subway Station, but it went out of business by the mid 90s.

Still, the door which McDonald’s and Pizza Hut had swung open a few years before when the 1988 Olympics were held in Seoul, was ready to be thrown wide open. Hardee’s, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Dominoes Pizza began to appear. Others like Kenny Roger’s Roasters, Sizzler and Dairy Queen were on the horizon (but would not survive the 1997 economic crisis). Obviously, the Korean market was being primed for something big. That something big was when the first T. G. I. Friday’s opened near the Yangjae Subway Station in 1992.

You would not believe the crowds. Back then there were not many English teachers and expats in Seoul (other than the US military personnel at Yongsan Garrison), but come Friday and Saturday you’d swear that every English teacher in the city was there. You had to wait at least an hour for a table.

Koreans were also catching on to this new dining out phenomenon, but it was going to take awhile for some people’s eating habits to change. In the beginning it was the younger crowd who flocked to Friday’s, but families soon began to appear.

Once when I was at the Friday’s near Hongik University with some students, this Korean family (including their halmoni-Korean for grandmother) walked passed our table. The halmoni stopped, looked at what we were eating (chicken fingers and fries) and then turned to her daughter.

“There’s no rice,” she said.