MUKBANG
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Contents
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Korean Dining Culture Broadcast Jockeys Livestream Set-Up Food and Sensuality Bibliography
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KOREAN DINING CULTURE
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New Korean Dining
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The Korean dining culture is specific and unique. With great respect for the elders of the Korean society, many aspects of dining such as seating and pace is guided and shaped by the eldest at the table. But also other rituals, such as no double dipping or blowing your nose at the dinner table, are important rules in many family households in Korea. Yet in the past years a completely new and different dining culture has arisen in Korea. Mukbang. Mukbang (meokbang; lit. “eating broadcast”) is an online phenomenon where young South Koreans have started eating alone, at home, in front of their webcams. These videos are livestreamed through an online platform called AfreecaTV, a peer to peer video streaming service hosting many other livestreams.
“We think it‘s because of three big reasons: the rise of one-person households in Korea, their ensuing loneliness and finally the huge trend of ‘well-being culture’ and excessive dieting in Korean society right now.” says Afreeca TV public relations co-ordinator Serim An.
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“For Koreans, eating is an extremely social, communal activity, which is why even the Korean word ‘family’ means, those who eat together.” Professor Sung-hee Park of Ewha University’s Division of Media Studies
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Mukbang
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Mukbang’s history is fairly new yet since it started in South Korea in 2008, it has quickly gained traction throughout the whole of the country, revealing issues of loneliness in a fragmented society. It started in 2008 with an individual eating broadcast on Afreeca TV called “Muk-show” (eating show). Quickly others joined in ones and twos, filming and broadcasting their eating rituals and habits.
“It started in 2008 with an individual eating broadcast on Afreeca TV called Muk-show.”
In 2013 Mukbang massively increased in popularity due to two people. One being Yoon Hoo, the 7-year old son of a famous Korean singer, and Ha Jung Woo, a famous actor from South Korea. Through their independent appearance on TV programmes and movies, displaying their normal eating, South Koreans became compelled. There was a huge upheaval in social media networking sited and broadcasting circles.
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It became especially popular for people between 20 and 30. Eating their food with gusto and delight without any play-acting. The reality of it was the captivating magic. “Every day, average 100,000 to 150,000 watch live ‘Mukbang’ shows on that website. What is surprising is that for some popular BJs (Broadcasting Jockeys), ‘Mukbang’ shows are not just a niche hobby, but a source of income. (CNN, 2014) For instance, one of the most popular BJ ‘The DIVA’, says that she earns over $9,000 a month, though she has to spend $3,000 to buy foods for the after shows.“, says Youna Lee, junior at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. An explaining factor of the popularity of ‘Muk-bang’ is the massive increase of the one-person households in Korea. Concerning statistics data reveals that it rose 14.9%, from 9.0% in 1990 to 23.9% in 2010 and it is expected to exceed 32% in 2030 (Ko, 2014). In fact, ‘Muk-bang’ is not a completely novel trend that just came up recently. There were some Korean TV programs that introduced gourmet foods from all over the country and broadcasted celebrities eating them. However, the alteration of food which is cheaper and more familiar to viewers, decreased the distance between viewers and broadcasters 26
substantially. This made people feel like they are participating in the meal with the person in the video and encourage them to gather around near TV screen or laptop monitor. Even though this eccentric phenomenon seems like a mere fad that will soon disappear, it discloses weighty implications of Korean society. The most notable thing is that for Korean people, eating is an extremely social activity. In Korean society, generally people eating alone feel a lot of discomfort and others also seeing them oddly. This originates from collectivism-food culture which has implicitly existed for a very long time. Thus, for Korean people, eating is not just a way of meeting desire, but also a prime means of forming a relationship and having emotional stability. Now, it is not surprising that one of the first greetings between Korean people is Did you have your meal?
“Every day, average 100,000 to 150,000 people watch live ‘Mukbang’ shows on that website.”
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“Koreans are very social - they eat together, live together, etc. Yet with the state of the current economy, people are getting more isolated. They are eating by themselves in small apartments and the only friends that they can have are the people they can watch on TV.� David Grey, Korean-American Food Guide
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Korean Expat Experience
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“I was never interested in Mukbang before I came to the Netherlands. I would go out with friends, or eat with my family, or even I was okay with eating alone in Korea. But since I came to the Netherlands, I was always in search for those Korean foods that I can never get or make in the Netherlands. And Mukbang came to an alternative for me! I get satisfaction by watching it! I don’t know others, but I don’t eat while watching Mukbang, I just watch it and it already feels so satisfying. I can see that the equipment for the BJ’s are getting better and better. Maybe they earn so much money so they can afford to buy really high quality microphones or camera. I can see and it is funny that they are earning so much money by just eating. My favorite is Benzz, because he eats so much and he eats really organized and clean. Sometimes I feel confused because he just eats so much and still manages to be healthy and fit. The way of broadcasting this way, I mean showing simply with camera and react on the real time chat from the viewers, is popular now in Korea. Even in some national TV channels use this method to be more alert and responsive to the viewers.” Seo Kim from Design Academy Eindhoven
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“[Mukbang] is a part of the spectacle culture in the sense of Guy Debord. Korea is a society of the spectacle, and it’s gotten to the point where social interaction can’t happen—can barely be understood—without being mediated in some way.” Michael Hurt, director of cultural studies at the Busan University of Foreign Studies
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BROADCAST JOCKEYS
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Broadcast Jockeys
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Mukbang artists are called BJs (broadcast jockeys). With rising interest in the sharing of filmed eating, BJs can become celebrities through broadcasting their eating. From getting free food to presents to actual payments. Thanks to the live chatroom the broadcasts are interactive and the feedback is instantaneous. Afreeca TV, the publicly listed social networking site that hosts Mukbang streaming channels, allows users to buy and send virtual “star balloons� which can be monetized after the site takes a 30-40% commission. Any payment by viewers is purely voluntary, as all channels can be viewed for free. The service is currently limited to South Korea, although the company has plans to expand it to other countries.
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BJ Banzz
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As every Mukbang artist is marked by their own twist to their mukbang shows, BJ Banzz is best know if his immaculatedly maintained body and his tendency to be respectful in his manners and speech. In October 2016 BJ Banzz was livestreaming when he heard a scream outside his apartment and went to investigate, only returning to turn off the broadcast. The online reaction was instananeous and his reputation or being kind and helpful strengthened. “Hello, I‘m BANZZ. Because I turned off my live show suddenly yesterday, I got a lot of calls from my fans, friends, and even journalists. I‘m briefly going to explain what happened. During the show, I heard a woman screaming from the stairs and it was a couple fighting. I went outside to check. Although it wasn‘t my business, I thought it wasn‘t something that I should ignore. I had to tell the viewers that I was turning off the streaming and stopped the show. I went out again and tried to stop the couple‘s fight, but I happened to get into a physical fight with the guy. I went to a police station with him in the dawn. Sorry for those who were worried and thank you.”
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“BJ Banzz is quiet and one of the cleanest eaters on AfreecaTV. The amount of food that he gulps down in just one broadcast is out of the ordinary. On his good days, he is able to eat three whole pies of cake and one regular carton of milk.” mssylee, Mukbang viewer
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“When I upload videos, I make anywhere between 3~4 million Won ($2,473~3,297 USD) per month. I’m the happy that I get to eat while I work.” BJ Banzz
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BJ Park Seo-Yeon
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BJ Park Seo-Yeon is also known as BJ The Diva for her visual appearance. She could easily be called the most famous Mukbang artist currently on the internet. She earns up to 9000 dollars a month (with expenses rising to around 3000 for food for the show). While it would seem that her metabolism would make her public enemy number one, some of The Diva‘s biggest fans are women, and indeed her channel is more popular with women than with men, with a 60-40 ratio. “When I first started my channel two years ago, I was showing a variety of content, from dance to outdoor activities, but it was my love of eating that really began drawing a response from fans,” says Park. “A lot of my viewers are on diets and they say they live vicariously through me, or they are hospital patients who only have access to hospital food so they also watch my broadcasts to see me eat.”
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“So many of my friends were getting married and I was living alone and lonely and bored.� Park Seo-Yeon
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“One of the best comments I ever received was from a viewer who said that she had gotten over her anorexia by watching me eat. That really meant a lot to me.� Park Seo-Yeon
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BJ Wang Joo
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Known for her frank and brazen commentaries BJ Wang Joo, also known as BJ Godessju, doesn‘t try to look pretty or try to recreate her image into something that she is not. During most of her broadcastings, she goes au-naturale with just about two servings of food set up to binge on all by herself. It‘s not about the portions with Wangju, but it is about how appetizing she makes every bit of food she indulges in look delicious.
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“I don’t know if you can call it a talent, I just enjoy eating very much.” Wang Joo
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“I have been broadcasting since 2010 but in the beginning but it was mainly about my daily life. One day I got so hungry so I broadcasted what I ate and viewers seemed to like it.� Wang Joo
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LIVESTREAM SET-UP
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Afreeca TV
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The majority of Afreeca TV‘s content is actually online gaming, where individual broadcasters called ‘BJs’ (short for Broadcast Jockeys), stream their gaming live for others to learn from or comment on. Anyone can live-stream from any device as long as they log in. Eating broadcasts began popping up around 2009, when users began to imitate celebrities‘ food shows by commenting as they were eating while broadcasting. Now, of the platform‘s 5,000 channels that are streaming at any given point in time, 5% of those are eating broadcasts. Afreeca TV has a daily average viewership of 3 million.
“Afreeca TV has a daily average viewership of 3 million.”
“Currently, there are more than 20 TV programs are under the concept of ‘Muk-bang’ and approximately 1000 or more real-time eating broadcasts are available from Internet broadcasting website called Afreeca TV.”, says Youna Lee, junior at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. 65
In order to understand Korea’s integration of media into all aspects of life, you have to understand the extent to which Korean video streaming has moved away from desktop and toward mobile technology. Unlike the West, the majority of Korean video streaming happens on phones. Thus, media in Korea really is one’s constant companion, like a second shadow. The ubiquity of mobile is aided by the fact that the country has had the world’s fastest internet for several years running. By 2020, if the Korean government sticks to its current plans, users will be able to download a whole movie in a second, as The New York Times reported. Already, a single car in the Seoul subway has multiple wifi hubs, with enough bandwidth for every commuter in a sardine-packed car to watch their favorite shows, in HD if needed. With 78.5% of the entire population on smartphones and 7 million people riding the Seoul subway network every day, Afreeca TV is becoming particularly popular with Korean commuters. The West trails far behind. “Our mobile users surpassed our PC users a while ago, and most of our viewers watch our content while they are on the move,” says Afreeca TV public relations coordinator Serim An. 66
“They have a different understanding of how media is used,” he said. “It’s become truly a part of life.” says Michael Hurt, director of cultural studies at the Busan University of Foreign Studies.
Structurally, a mukbang video is not dissimlar to a “haul video”—the genre of web show popularized by the 20-year-old jillionaire YouTube star Bethany Mota, in which someone brings out a bunch of shopping bags and shows you each item she bought, one by one, with some pretty insipid patter. But the videos thereby differ from any other food videos, such as advertising. McDonald’s ads on Youtube for example, keep on filming their actors eating from the side, letting the viewer watch the action as an outsider. KFC makes their actors look into the camera but still only with a sideways glance. True Mukbang videos are always filmed from directly infront, at eye level. The full frontal camera position allows viewers to feel like they are potentially sitting opposite their Mukbang star and eating together with them.
“They have a different understanding of how media is used.”
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FOOD AND SENSUALITY
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Food and Sensuality
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Mukbang has one crucial difference to you and your mum Skyping whilst eating at home. Mukbang is about excess. The livestreams depict people consuming excessive amounts of food. The food consumed are often Korean staples, such as noodles and kimchi. But also other food stuffs, such as fried chicken, pizzas and cake are very popular.
“It plays with society pressure of self-control and certain body regulations, watching people devour huge amounts of food, disregarding many social norms, is in some way rather carnal.�
Online Mukbang is never mentioned to have any sexual connotation, yet for any onlooker, it is not hard to see that, especially women, eating large qualities of food with a certain mixture of desire and determination could be seen as sexual. It plays with society pressure of selfcontrol and certain body regulations, watching people devour huge amounts of food, disregarding many social norms, is in some way rather carnal.
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Yet many still argue that Mukbang is an industry where people eat on camera for money, without any sexual context. Yet one Korean girl (Showry) has become quite the Internet sensation recently because of her undeniably hilarious NSFW (Not Safe For Work) videos parodying mukbang. Showry gained popularity for posting bizarre yet funny videos of herself cooking, eating food, and drinking beverages in provocative comical-style ways. She often pours liquids – including chocolate sauce, ketchup, and whipped cream – all over herself. She also dances with fish, shoves cake in her mouth, and makes a mean smoothie. Showry, whose name is Seo Ae-jin, started her YouTube channel in 2015 and has racked up over one million views on all of her videos. Showry has said that her videos are unique in that there is nothing like them in Asia, and they challenge stereotypes about Asian girls. She’s even created a new series for her YouTube audience, where she features as the lead female in a parody of a Virtual Dating Sim.
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It is often about guilt and excess, consuming too much of something, for others to see and experience vicariously. Often the type and amount of food consumed is either something the viewers dream of doing themselves but cannot or they would not even be able to. This fascination and voyeurism could be see in the same light as pornographic videos.
“It is often about guilt and excess, consuming too much of something, for others to see and experience vicariously.”
The following images are excerpts of a popular Korean TV show called “Let’s Eat”, which is closely connected to the internet phenomenon of Mukbang. Short videos of couples eating, often portrayed in a sexual manner and building climax as the woman let’s loose of her inhibitions and regards to manners to sheer lust for the food. The man either joining her or frequently becoming a longing onlooker of the female desire.
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Bibliography “‘(Mukbang)’ – MAHTEM | !”. Mahtem.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 12 Mar. 2017. “14 Essential Etiquette Rules For Korean Dining”. The Spruce. N.p., 2017. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.
“(@Djsrhkwl1) • Instagram Photos And Videos”. Instagram.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 12 Mar. 2017. “vsvs”. 1boon. N.p., 2017. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.
Hong, Euny and Euny Hong. “Why Some Koreans Make $10,000 A Month To Eat On Camera”. Quartz. N.p., 2017. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.
Hong, Euny, and Euny Hong. “Why Some Koreans Make $10,000 A Month To Eat On Camera”. Quartz. N.p., 2017. Web. 25 Mar. 2017.
Jin, Elley. “What NOT To Do In Korea”. An Introvert in Seoul. N.p., 2017. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.
“Korean Girl Goes Viral For Her Extremely Sexual Mukbang Parodies — Koreaboo”. Koreaboo. N.p., 2017. Web. 25 Mar. 2017.
“Let‘s Eat E04 Tteokbokki Scene.”. YouTube. N.p., 2017. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.
Palladino, Valentina. “Mukbang And Hauls: The Rise Of Super-Indulgent Eating And Shopping Videos”. Ars Technica. N.p., 2017. Web. 25 Mar. 2017.
“Tampopo”. Film Society of Lincoln Center. N.p., 2017. Web. 12 Mar. 2017. “The Food Porn Superstars Of South Korea: Mukbang”. YouTube. N.p., 2017. Web. 12 Mar. 2017. “Top 8 Mukbang Online Streamers On Afreecatv | Allkpop.Com”. allkpop. N.p., 2017. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.
“What Is South Korea’s Mukbang And Why Is It So Popular?”. koreaportal. N.p., 2017. Web. 25 Mar. 2017. “Why Millions Of People Watch Videos Of Strangers Eating Huge Amounts Of Food”. Fusion. N.p., 2017. Web. 25 Mar. 2017.
“Tvn DRAMA”. YouTube. N.p., 2017. Web. 12 Mar. 2017. 91
back of flyleaf
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