Mukbang: a Culinary Craze From Korea
D
o you like the idea of watching someone
slurp and smack their way through a bowl
of tasty noodles? “Mukbang” may be for you.
Mukbang is a famous genre of video that peo-
ple love watching in Korea. If you are curious
about this genre, do a Youtube or Twitch
search. income last year was 100,000,000 Korean won
($87,000), and experts expect that his income
will increase more this year.
Mukbang stars eat their way through kilos of
food. The point of it all is to watch people eat
as much as possible. These videos are pop-
ular all around the world, but especially in
Korea. A student in the 8th grade told me that she
usually watches mukbang videos when she is
hungry at school, and that she gets vicarious
satisfaction from them.
Some famous Korean mukbang stars are Benz
and Dongge. They mostly have a concept for
what they are going to eat, for example, Benz
eats one type of food in enormous quantities,
while Dongge eats interesting food, such as
ocean grape, edible paper and edible tape. In mukbang videos, people talk about their
interesting life stories while eating, or they
simply eat to make the audience focus on the
sound.
In mukbang, there are criteria that are im-
portant to follow: how palatable the food
looks, and how good the eating sounds are.
Mukbang is also influential in the market-
People like watching mukbang because they place. On a Korean TV program, a famous
like the way the food looks, they feel lonely singer ate some seaweed crackers, and the
eating solo, or they simply love smacking and sales increased more than three times com-
pared to last year.
slurping sounds.
Mukbang is getting more and more popular
every day, and it is spreading more and more
These stars also earn a lot of money. Benz’s around the world.
by Sarah Lee