Okay, the slogan is not that dorky, but it looks like frequent NYT ad customer Seo Kyoung-duk is at it again. Known for purchasing full page NYT ads to promote Goguryeo and Dokdo, Seo has partnered with members of the MBC TV variety show “Infinite Challenge” to put a full-page advertisement for bibimbap in the New York Times.
According to the Korea Herald:
“During the shooting of the episode in New York, we realized how little New Yorkers knew about Korea and Korean food,” Kim Tae-ho, producer of “Infinite Challenge” told local media.
Seo also related that “the best way to create awareness of Korea without actually visiting,” is “through experiencing Korean food,” thus explaining the logic behind the advertisement. With a webpage dedicated to Korean cuisine currently underway and another advertisement for the New York Times in line, Seo alluded to future plans of furthering this path for national publicity.
Another ad planned for the NYT? Well, at least the publishers can’t complain.
Update: Fresh off their Annie Chung’s Gochujang sauce announcement, there is talk that CJ will try to open up a chain of bibimbap restaurants in the states named “BBGO” with a bowl costing $10 USD. Yikes!
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
the koreans never choose the right picture. why do they have the kosari in front? the meat should have been put into the foreground. also, the kochujang and egg look like something we all do in the morning.
c’mon korea, get some westerners to help you reach westerners! what you like and what you think looks good doesn’t travel that far. wake up!
ps look at robert’s picture of chonju pibimpap for a better idea.
…and the blurb in the accompanying photo is terribly worded…who thought of that?
Pawi – the meat isn’t foregrounded because bibimbap is marketed as being very healthy and meat doesn’t really fit into that picture.
It was also a bad decision on the part of the designer to have ‘bibimbap’ in all caps. It makes it look like it’s written in Cyrillic or something.
You know what… you got a point there.
Also, who’s gonna know what “namul” is? I can just imagine the typical New Yorker, “Namul, what the fuck is that? I’ll pass.”
And… if it’s suppose to be marketed as “healthy” then the word “healthy” might be good word to throw in there instead of “namul” (but not in the place of namul)
It’s certainly very old hat to point out Korean English mistakes. Especially when those mistakes occur in Korea where it doesn’t matter to anyone except foreigners. But this ad was not placed in Korea so I will repeat the well-worn complaint (as if it would make a difference). Get a native-speaker to fix your writing! I ALWAYS have a Korean proof-read my Korean writing, it’s really not that hard.
Says who? Meat + non-starch veggies = balanced meal
It’s the high glycemic, nutritionally challenged white rice that is appropriately buried under all the colorful vegetables.
Not a bad idea – especially if you’re trying to grow the market. The ROI is my biggest question – even in the near-death of most newspapers, it still costs a pretty penny to take out a full-page color ad… Mixed rice? Where’s that in the bowl?
$10 USD would be about the right price – it’s not quite fast food, so you can’t price it like gimbap cheonguk. Also, price has a strong correlation with perceived quality – price it too low and people will think you’re skimping or leaving out something important.
You can still have quality bibimbap for about $6…
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/26585/
The BBGO concept is what came from the tasting panels I was helping to organize. It’s an extension of Cafe Sobahn, which has pricier bowls but good stuff. Glad to see it’s going forward.
Sonagi – what I mean is that meat is not generally perceived as being healthy – especially not red meat. The audience for this ad are not intended to apply rational thought to what they see. They would be the sort of people who would say, ‘wow, lots of strange Asian vegetables! They must be really, really healthy and detoxifying because they’re Asian.’
I don’t like to nitpick about language — when I place my full-page ad about Machias Seal Island in the Chosun Ilbo, I’ll be lucky to do any better — but if you’re going to blow the money to run a full-page ad in the NYT, you really should have an English-speaker look at the copy first.
http://www.maangchi.com/talk/topic/konglish-ad-for-bibimbap-in-the-new-york-times
Dammit Rob. Now you have done it…
Pretty soon the site is gonna be attacked by a bunch of Machias Seal Island trolls. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
@5 and 14
Unfortunately, it’s not just a matter of having it proof-read by a furrner, but also of having someone in charge who is willing to acknowledge that said furrner might, just might, have a better idea of what works well in English than a Korean.
To be fair, though, I’ve worked in writing/editing in Korea for a few years, and things are improving in this regard, rogue NYT bibimbap ads notwithstanding.
There’s actually a good chance that this ad was in fact proof-read by a real, live native English speaker, or what’s called in Korea “a native.”
The problem is that, based on the belief that one’s as good as another, they chose the wrong one. It happens.
The real problem is the picture, though. It makes me less likely to want to eat this dish, and it’s my favorite Korean dish at that!
What the picture says to me is: “Hi. We are Korean and we don’t know jack shit about food safety”.
It’s probably against the NYC health code to serve RAW EGG in a restaurant. Can I get some Salmonella with my rice please?
Is this knucklehead for real? New Yorkers have know about Korean food for over 30 years — and well enough to know there are a lot more interesting dishes than bibimbap on the menu.
You can take the frog out of the little pond, but you can’t get the pond scum off the frog, apparently.
Not at the Korea Times, who seem to be going backward in this regard, if anything.
Hmm… surely restaurants at NYC serves dishes like steak tartare?
Hmm… surely restaurants at NYC serves dishes like steak tartare?
Getting your your high school senior to take picture of bibimbap: Free
Writing ad copy in Korean and having your cousin translate it: Free
Placing one-page color ad in NYT: $250,000
Making Korean food look childish to New Yorkers: Priceless
Gorguryeo, Dokdo and the East Sea aren’t exactly endless sources of ad material for KD Seo.
Sooner or later, the guy has to move on, but Bibimbap??? Must be getting desperate.
this japanese guy doesn’t like pibimbap very much
the bureau chief of sankei shimbun used the chinese saying in 4 letters (고사성어) “양두구육” (sheep’s head dog meat) to express that the people who try 비빔밥 will get a surprise when they see it all become an unidentifiable mixture/mush in front of their eyes and expressed his doubt over it ever becoming a global food.
i think it’s funny.
i’m no fan of the art of 비빔 either. i absolutely cannot stand the overuse of sesame oil in korean food(especially in food which didn’t used to have it as an ingredient) – it should be banned.
i think we should go for 미역국 + 고등어 구이 + 김치 + 김 구이 – simple but effective- as korean set meal to represent korea.
Namul is the Sub-Mariner of Marvel Comics’ Avengers superhero team.
Yuna,
I can’t believe entire news articles are being written up about [ some dude's dislike of bibimbap. ]
^—this is frequently reused comment type on chosun.com, so it’s not just another arrogant gyopo complaining about korean media.
i think the japanese find the koreans’ custom of 비벼 먹는 것 quite surprising – go to 4:14 of this interview of japanese students in korea by the koreanophile japanese actor/singer 구사나기 쓰요시, who says he himself mixed curry and rice from when he was young ^^
아니 그럼 모 라면국물에다 밥넣서 먹는거 보면 아주 기절하겠네요.
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