[Asia Report]The Unexpected Success of K-Food 'Buldak'

A promotional tasting event for Buldak Bokkeum Myun is being held at a supermarket in the Philippines. Photo by Samyang Foods

As the number of people traveling to and from Southeast Asia has greatly increased, even the most trivial local news is quickly transmitted to Korea. Many people have come to know that Samyang Foods' ‘Buldak Bokkeummyeon (Buldak)’ is a representative product of Korea in the Asian food and beverage market even before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the reality is that many still do not know about it at all. First of all, this product is not easily noticeable in Korea, but the story changes once you leave Korea. It is a representative product that can be easily found from the barren deserts of western China to the luxury department stores in Bangkok, Thailand, and even in ordinary supermarkets on remote islands in Indonesia. Especially ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) experts do not hesitate to rank ‘Buldak’ as the number one product representing ‘K-food.’

The popularity of Buldak, firmly armed with its extreme spiciness, was not easy for anyone to predict, and it has been difficult to analyze the reasons why it has lasted so long. In particular, the ASEAN market is composed of multiple religions and ethnic groups spread across 10 countries, making it difficult to conduct unified marketing or continuous promotional activities, and naturally, it remained an untapped area for the Korean food industry. Decisively, compared to Korea, the lower national income and higher distribution costs resulted in low profitability for exporters, causing long-term neglect.

However, despite being 2 to 3 times more expensive than local instant noodles and even without active promotional activities, Buldak succeeded in penetrating the market to the extent that local consumers seek it out first regardless of the country. Currently, it is safe to say that ‘Buldak’ is the most widely spread Korean food product in East Asia. Some explain this phenomenon as the ‘second K-pop wave’ or the ‘YouTube challenge effect,’ but the Buldak phenomenon deserves a more serious analysis for the globalization of the Korean food industry.

◇ Long-lasting without soup = The pan-Asian popularity of ‘Buldak’ should first be noted as a fried noodle product with a long shelf life. The Southeast Asian region generally suffers from unstable electricity supply. While various frozen foods sell well in big cities, frequent power outages must be considered just outside urban areas. Therefore, a fried product that can be stably distributed for over six months even in the scorching heat was a suitable export item.

The food culture related to the heat is also relevant. Although hot pork broth-based Vietnamese pho is famous, soup noodles are not very popular across ASEAN as a whole. For common people living without air conditioning, hot soup is just inconvenient. Perhaps for this reason, stir-fried noodles are preferred, accompanied by cool soft drinks as a dominant eating habit. Unlike the soup-based instant noodles popular in Northeast Asia, ‘Buldak’ has the advantage of being a bibim-myeon (mixed noodles) that can be eaten with various dishes, which laid the foundation for its success.

Attention must also be paid to the ‘spicy flavor,’ which is currently popular worldwide. Southeast Asia is famous as the homeland of various spices such as pepper, clove, and nutmeg. People exhausted by the heat have a tradition of mixing various ingredients with the rich aroma and taste of natural spices. In addition, the spicy Sichuan cuisine spread from China and the sharp curry culture originating from India have long been popular. In short, rather than the mild and refreshing Korean cooking style, the region was already prepared for strong and stimulating spiciness. Buldak, which is 2 to 3 times spicier than typical spicy instant noodles, was welcomed more in Southeast Asia than in Korea due to its unconventional Korean style.

◇ Halal certification and ‘chicken’... ultimately ‘fun’ = Half of Southeast Asia, including Malaysia and Indonesia, belongs to the Islamic cultural sphere. A characteristic of this region is the strict religious inspection of meat used. The institutionalization of this is the ‘halal certification.’ The core of this system is to filter out the use of pork and freshwater fish, which are strictly prohibited in Islamic culture, and to improve the ethical and cleanliness standards of general meats such as beef and chicken. Recently, some Korean food products were found to use pork fat (lard) during frying, causing controversy. Therefore, locals often do not fully trust the halal certification mark on foreign products and carefully check the ingredient list on the back. Professor Seo Gyuwon of KL National University praised, “Buldak is a model case that thoroughly studied Islamic culture and localized accordingly.”

At the same time, the fact that Buldak prominently features ‘chicken,’ a familiar ingredient to people in the southern regions, is also cited as a success factor. Of course, there has been debate about whether the product actually contains chicken. However, ‘Buldak (hot-chicken)’ is a name that anyone can easily imagine the taste of, and it is a universal ingredient without racial or religious rejection, so it was not rejected anywhere. Even if expensive, it was able to settle in the market carrying the premium of being ‘Korean-made.’ Bang Jeonghwan, an Indonesia regional expert, analyzed, “The spicy flavor and chicken dish image promoted by Buldak naturally blended with the local MZ generation (Millennials + Gen Z).”

Of course, what made this possible is the popularity of K-pop, which has widely penetrated Asian MZ generations, and the influence of YouTube. For a while, videos showing who could endure spicier flavors were popular content on YouTube.

The fact that Asian youth routinely consume free YouTube content on their smartphones suggests that Korean exporters should focus more on YouTube marketing in the future.

Vietnam expert Yoo Youngguk analyzes, “It is now time to approach the food and beverage industry from the perspective of the entertainment industry.” Samyang Foods created a blockbuster product with ‘fun taste’ instead of ‘traditional taste.’ Especially, the trend of young people enjoying instant noodles playfully through YouTube and mixing different noodles is an innovative development in food culture.

As a result, just as K-pop has become a representative pop culture in Asia beyond Korea, the long-term global success of Buldak is expected to become a major milestone in the development of the Asian food industry.

Jung Hojae, Researcher at Korea University ASEAN Center

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.