Lessons of The Bibimbap Backpackers

y Jaeyeon Woo

On a warm day last spring, Kang Sang-kyun left for China with four friends just like many young Korean globetrotters except they carried a bunch of bowls and an electric rice cooker.

Their mission: promoting bibimbap.

The quintet, ages 21 to 30, traveled 23 cities in 15 countries and doled out bibimbap – the mainstay Korean dish with an assortment of vegetables, meats, and eggs on top of rice, seasoned with red pepper paste and sesame oil – on streets to strangers.

They called themselves the Bibimbap Backpackers.

It wasn’t easy. Many people were indifferent to Korean food. And getting the product to be consistently good in varied settings took time.

“After two months, we got to a point where we could mix things right to make a consistent taste,” Mr. Kang said.

They went to the Great Wall in China, the Roman Colosseum in Italy, to the Santa Monica Beach in L.A. They used local grocery stores for ingredients. And they created their events on their own, though sometimes Korean expats would help out by finding the right location, getting permission and even helping to pay for the food. They called their events “Bibimbap Tables” and they held 100 in all – 99 overseas and the final one in Seoul last month.

Mr. Kang said his favorite stop was New York City. “New Yorkers were most responsive and willing to try something new,” he said.

Chung Kyu-woon, another member of the group, also liked New York. “Some asked for more, others half-jokingly suggested doing business with them, and still others seriously asked us where they could eat things like this,” she said.

The 255-day trip cost 115 million won, or about $100,000. Each member of the team spent about 15 million won of their own money. The rest was paid for by the Agriculture Ministry and CJ Foodville Co., which started a bibimbap chain in 2010 called bibigo. CJ has opened bibigo outlets in the U.S., China and Singapore as well as South Korea.

Promoting Korean food has been one of the key cultural projects of the Lee Myung-bak government. In May 2009, it launched an ambitious “Korean Cuisine to the World” campaign led by First Lady Kim Yoon-ok. But many wondered how much the government’s efforts could help spread a culinary culture, which is simply different from an export item like computer chips.

The Bibimbap Backpackers said they believed the government went too upscale with its effort.

“There should be more reasonable and easily-accessible Korean restaurants, like Vietnamese ones, overseas,” Ms. Chung said.

The group also said that it’s crucial to adapt Korean food to non-Korean’s taste, instead of sticking to tradition. What matters is whether the consumer likes the taste, not where it’s from. “There is no point of arguing about whether a bulgogi taco is Korean. Do we really need to define the nationality of food?” Ms. Chung said.

“Instead of forcing them ‘original Korean food,’ we’d do well to offer them something more to their taste,” Mr. Kang said. For example, they offered people with non-traditional bibimbap seasonings, like soy source. “When they become comfortable with it, they will naturally try original.”

More than 200 people attended the last Bibimbap Table in Seoul. Mr. Kang said they decided to finish the project at home to inspire younger South Koreans to take charge of their own lives.

“I wanted to deliver a message to many college grads that getting a job in a big company isn’t the only option. I hope many young people to try something new and adventurous and experience more,” Mr. Kang said.

Such creativity, he said, may even lead to the jobs that young Koreans aspire to. “Companies are looking for something from you more than good English scores,” he said.