Some 15 years ago, Malaysians were introduced to a Korean drama series that quickly became a global sensation. This iconic series opened the doors of K-drama to the world, and Malaysia is no stranger to it!
Our love for all things Korean – food, fashion, beauty, drama, music and so on – quickly escalated into an undescribable passion even til today.
Malaysia and the rest of East Asia were so enthralled by the Korean culture that many have sought to travel to South Korea for holidays, just to have the glimpse of experiencing the true lifestyle there.
As per Korea Tourism Organization’s (KTO) statistics, for the first three months of 2017, Malaysian visitors reached a high of 71,215 individuals which was a rise by 14.4 per cent from 62,236 during the same period last year.
This was up by a stark contrast of 272.4 per cent from only 19,122 during the same period back in 2003.
It is only natural that after visiting and immersing themselves in the culture of South Korea, enthusiasts cannot forget the charm and benefits of Korean goods and services which may or may not be found in retail outlets in Malaysia.
This was one of the points discovered by Malaysian online shopping website 11street. Through its recent ‘Shop The World’ campaign, 11street revealed some astonishing behaviours exemplified by Malaysian shoppers.
“Firstly, Malaysians loved products from Korea, Taiwan and the US,” the online marketplace said in a statement last week. “Consequently, these three countries were also the most popular countries with the highest number of purchases.”
‘Malaysians Love Korean Food’
Another study from 11street affirmed Malaysians’ love specifically for Korean food.
“The insight we obtained from the market confirmed what we have known for a while now, that Malaysians love Korean food. It revealed that Malaysians often search for Korean food items such as ramyun, chigae, chimek and samgyupsal.
“On top of that, we noted that a commonly recurring word among these searches on 11street is ‘spicy’, which goes to exemplify Malaysians’ love for spicy food,” said Bruce Lim, Vice President of Merchandising for 11street previously.
“In fact, ‘heat’ is a common ground between Malaysian and Korean foods, which is why we at 11street have ramped up our spicy Korean food offerings on our platform, to enable our shoppers to find what they love.
“Through this partnership with K Market, we also took this effort up a notch by introducing products that are halal so that our Muslim shoppers continue to shop with us at ease.”
According to 11street, the sale of Korean food items on its platform has doubled since its inception in April 2015, with the 26 to 35 age group contributing on average 40 per cent of total Korean food sale in 2016.
Among the top five items often purchased from its platform are Pepero, a cookie stick dipped in chocolate; ramyun, also known as instant noodles; kimchi, a fermented Korean side dish made of vegetables; toppoki, a type of soft rice cake; and milkis, a popular carbonated beverage in South Korea.
Other popular Korean food items that are highly sought after by 11street shoppers are banana milk, red pepper powder for kimchi making and healthy vinegar drink.
With evidence pointing to the fact that the Korean culture trend is here to stay, BizHive Weekly takes a look at how the Korean cuisine industry fares locally in Kuching:
Kuching Seoul Garden: An icon of Kuching’s Korean taste
Ask “Where can we get Korean food in Kuching?” and many may first think of Kuching Seoul Garden (Seoul Garden) which has been operating for several years now.
Proprietor Steven Lee knows a thing or two about bringing the influential Korean culture trend here to this city.
Lee first ventured into the restaurant business here seven years ago with Seoul Garden at Central Park Commercial Centre, and initially started with just operating from the ground floor of a shoplot.
Lee told BizHive Weekly the reason why he was so passionate to open a restaurant here – having had more than 10 years of experience in the restaurant business back in South Korea – was to expand Korea’s culture in other countries.
“We try to bring a slice of Korean food and culture to Kuching by taking a family-oriented method to run the food and beverage business,” he said. This means taking the time to serve, assist and dine with customers akin to that of eating at home ith family.
“The ground floor serves ala carte dishes, with an authentic menu list which kept growing and changing over the years to suit the evolving food trends.”
Using very little monosodium glutamate (MSG) when preparing the dishes, Lee believed this to be one of the few reasons why Seoul Garden has a lot of regular Korean customers as they know that the food at his restaurant are authentic and healthier.
Lee also affirmed that he sources his seasonings and sauces directly fom South Korea, lending to the authenticity of his dishes.
“From when we started, these (seasonings and sauces) have gone up by some 40 per cent in prices, especially with the GST (goods and services tax),” he commented. “But we’ve never raised our food prices offered.”
Authentically made
In fact, Seoul Garden’s own kimchi stands out from its competitors as Lee adopts the traditional Korean style of making kimchi – which means a longer processing time for the salted and fermented vegetables.
Additionally, instead of offering seven to eight side dishes for customers, Seoul Garden only serves five, including kimchi and fruits.
This is because Lee observed that local customers are usually not able to finish the typical portion of seven to eight side dishes customary in Korean restaurants.
At Seoul Garden, with the exception of kimchi which is a must at every meal, the side dishes will change daily so that regular customers will not feel bored eating the same thing everyday.
Lee usually tries to change up or add new dishes on the Seoul Garden menu in the middle of the year, as that is the time when they are not too busy and can start becoming creative and designing new dishes according to the latest trend.
Recently, Kuching Seoul Garden launched a few new dishes incorporating melted cheese which are eaten with the main dish such as stir fried squid or grilled chicken pieces.
He explained that this is the new trend as he noticed that young people generally like to eat food with cheese. This trend is apparently very common in Singapore and Korea, he observed.
Changing business model
Two and a half years ago, Lee decided to branch out into the buffet business model with the addition of a second floor dedicated to meat barbeque (BBQ) steamboat buffet.
With this buffet, Lee opined that it is a much more straightforward business model given that customers need only pay for a fixed price to have unlimited access to all types of meat, seafood, fruits, drinks and ice cream.
For the restaurant’s side, staff will only need to prepare the ingredients as the customers themselves will do the cooking.
“It is more fun,” he said, “as families, or even friends and couples can sit down to a meal together, cook and enjoy each other’s company. They can also adjust the seasonings to their liking.”
While he does hope to expand and open more halal and non-halal meat BBQ steamboat buffets throughout Sarawak, Lee has reservations in opening more of his ala carte style restaurants in other cities.
This is because of the extensive menu they have at the ala carte restaurant which will require too much time training and it will also be difficult to maintain the quality and taste of the foods.
When asked on future potential growth, Lee said he is now looking for potential investors or joint venture partners to consider opening up a halal version of his buffet restaurant to cater to the Muslim market.
Lee Korean Fried Chicken a new franchise venture
Recently, Lee has further expanded into Kuching’s first Korean fried chicken restaurant business, a popular Korean cuisine and concept back home.
Lee explained that in South Korea, if the fried chicken eateries are located in office areas, those usually attract office people who after clocking out from work, will go and have themselves some fried chicken and down that with beer.
Over here in Kuching, Lee believes that his new restaurant, Lee Korean Fried Chicken (Lee KFC), will attract customers from all walks of life because of the sauces which he makes himself for the chicken dishes.
He explained that these sauces are important for these dishes, adding that all are made with natural ingredients consisting of carrots, garlic, onions and South Korea-imported chilli powders and yellow and white starch syrup.
This, he highlighted, is a better business decision than other restaurants which have fully relied on ready-made sauces imported from South Korea. This has resulted in a lot of expired stock and wasted shipping costs due to their inabilities to estimate how the exact amount of supply required.
“Compared to other international or local outlets which rely on two typical flavours of spicy or non-spicy, our wide variety of fried and grilled chicken dishes with their authentic sauces will draw in customers who want to try something new and different from other competitors,” he stated.
Slow start expected
Customer flow into the restaurant is currently still slow but Lee said that this is normal for brand new businesses. “Because when I first opened (my own fried chicken restaurant) in South Korea, it was the same,” he said.
Even with a good location facing the main road at 3rd Mile, he expects a slow start as he knows that customers are still getting to know about what Lee KFC has to offer.
To ensure that customers receive their dishes freshly cooked, Lee KFC’s procedures do not involve pre-deep frying the chicken. Instead, the restaurant will only fry the dishes upon receiving the orders, as is customary in every fried chicken restaurant in Korea.
Additionally, Lee pointed out that Lee KFC had designed a slightly different menu from the typical fried chicken restaurant concept in South Korea. Aside from its main fried chicken dishes, Lee KFC also added popular Korean favourites such as kimchi jjigae, ramyeon, tteokbokki and many more on its menu.
The idea is that for families or groups of people whogo to the restaurant to eat, they can order a variety of dishes and share them together.
As with his Seoul Garden BBQ steamboat buffet concept, Lee is also open for discussion to those who are interested to invest, joint venture or do a franchise of Lee KFC in other aeas of Kuching or other cities in Sarawak. On the sauces, he explained that he can just make the sauces to supply to these other outlets when needed while the staff only need to come to the main outlet in Kuching to learn how to use the machines to cook or fry the chickens.
That said, he only aims to allow the opening of a few outlets so as not to oversaturate the market and ensure the survival of each individual restaurant.
In fact, if possible, Lee hopes that when opening new outlets in other areas, that the concepts will consist of Lee KFC on the ground floor while the buffet is on the first floor of the same building.
Pullman Kuching: Jumping on the bandwagon
Pullman Kuching is also taking steps to incorporate the Korean cuisine into their food and beverage (F&B) offerings while the K-culture is still trending on the local scenes.
Pullman Kuching general manager Charles Choi who recently relocated here explained that because of his position, he has tried to do some market research on the F&B industry in Kuching.
“Whenever I have time for dinner during the weekends, I try to visit as many restaurants as possible. I could see that at the moment, for Kuching, because of the small population and the fact that there are a lot of restaurants operating here, you need to open something special otherwise your restaurant (risks becoming) empty,” Choi observed.
“You need to have a specialty and I could see that, at the moment, once you have Korean cuisine, Japanese cuisine or even Thai cuisine, it is working. I was thinking to myself, ‘Once you have something special, it already ticks one box on being popular.
“So, what about if it is good in terms of quality and authenticity?’ That is how I decided to hire a Korean chef from Korea (for Pullman Kuching) so that we can compete with our other competitors in terms of quality and being authentic.”
Driven by young demand
Hiring a Korean chef is one of Choi’s efforts to boost up Pullman Kuching again and also to show that the hotel will be different from others in the hotel industry.
On why Sarawakians and Malaysians in general are still drawn to Korean food, Choi explained that this is because the market is driven by young people.
He opined that the Korean cuisine is still quite a new thing or trend in Kuching and overall Sarawak.
While Korean-based Choi admitted that he is still new to the city, he could see that the whole city consumer market has been dominated by the older or senior generation.
“And recently, I would assume that the young generation has started to become dominant in terms of culinary experience, eating out and visiting new places (to eat),” he observed.
“That is why some of the trendy malls, restaurants, they are becoming popular. Because if you go to popular restaurants in Kuching, it is filled with young people, not the older crowd. I think that’s a sign that now, young people are starting to have financial power to purchase.”
Choi also pointed out that as these financially capable young people are still attracted to the K-culture of pop music (K-pop), dramas and movies, that fever has thus carried over to the Korean restaurant industry.
Eye on halal menu
On how Pullman Kuching aims to differentiate the Korean cuisine it serves from competing restaurants out there, Choi affirmed that they will be completely halal.
“Because in Kuching, surprisingly, we have almost 10 korean restaurants and I have been to most of them. Quality wise, they are ok. They are serving good food and they are good restaurants in terms of quality.
“Problem is, they are not serving halal food. They are only focusing on one part of the market, non-halal,” he said.
As Pullman Kuching serves all halal food, Choi is taking advantage of this and plans to cater to 100 per cent of the market here with the hotel’s very own halal, authentic and quality Korean food.
“The hotel will be able to serve 100 per cent of the market and not just 50 per cent or small portion of the market,” he enthused.
Overall, Choi hopes that the Korean food will continue being popular here but acknowledges that it is a trend and trends do change.
“I hope it lasts for a long time because I’m Korean,” he said.
“But, nothing lasts forever. I think we have to take advantage of this trend and I feel very lucky because I came to Kuching during this time when K-pop and K-culture is still popular.”
Korean purchases online continue to trend, says 11street
Another insight into the constantly growing Korean food trend in Malaysia was provided by none other than online marketplace 11street which has seen growth in Malaysians conducting Korean-food related searches on their platform.
11street, which was established in Korea since 2008, is one of the top global e-commerce marketplace providers with 400,000 sellers serving over 30 million consumers worldwide.
According to vice president of Merchandising Bruce Lim in an email interview with BizHive Weekly, 11street search trends saw an increase in Malaysians searching for Korean food, recipe and ways to prepare Korean food.
“Apart from that, the search for Korean food on 11street saw an increase from the previous year, whereby we experienced significant boost of total Korean food sale in 2016,” Lim said.
“This also comes at the back of our year-end survey, where 11street predicted consumers to likely explore new product categories for groceries and fresh produce when shopping online, a clear indication to the growing interest to purchase food products online, especially for Korean food items that are not easily available in Malaysia.”
To date, the five most popular Korean items purchased from 11street’s platform includes Pepero, a cookie stick dipped in chocolate, Ramyun, also known as instant noodles, Banana milk, a banana flavoured Korean milk beverage, Toppoki, a type of soft rice cake and Ottogi Cheese Ramen, another famous Korean instant noodles.
“Other popular Korean food items that are highly sought after and getting popular amongst Malaysians in 2017, are Milkis, a popular carbonated beverage in South Korea; red pepper powder for kimchi-making; and healthy vinegar drinks,” Lim revealed.
Food with extra ‘kick’
While 11street does not have specific data to indicate which states have the highest demand for Korean food items, Lim has however noted that the response the online marketplace gets in general are very encouraging as it sees an increased demand across the board for Korean food items.
From K-dramas to pop music to cuisine, the interest for everything Korean especially food has continued to surge since the penetration of K-culture in Malaysia, according to a recent search trend finding by 11street.
In fact, Lim observed that there are many similarities between the Korean and Malaysian cuisine as both feature spices in their food which gives the cuisine that extra ‘kick’.
“’Heat’ is a common ground between Malaysian and Korean foods which is evident in the usage of chillies in both cuisine,” he said.
Meanwhile, Lim believed that the Korean food or cuisine industry will continue to grow and become popular in Malaysia.
Since its collaboration with KMarket, a subsidiary of KMT Trading Sdn Bhd and importer and distributor of Korean products in Malaysia, last year, 11street has seen a rise in demand for Korean food products on its platform.
“Korean cuisine is poised to be one of the top cuisines in Malaysia, adding more flavour to the already tasty cuisine we have here, as it is no longer difficult to stumble upon different kinds of Korean restaurants or even Korean products in Malaysia,” the vice president remarked.
Matthew Lee, Group Managing Director of KMT Trading Sdn Bhd commented: “Two years ago when we decided to open a Korean supermarket in Kuala Lumpur, we were motivated by the growing Korean community in the area.
“Essentially, we wanted to bring a piece of home closer to them but we certainly did not foresee the steady stream of Malaysians frequenting our store.
“We realised that in order for us to cater to more Korean food lovers out there, it is more effective that we partner a reputable online marketplace such as 11street.
“To date, we are happy to continue supplying Malaysians with the Korean foods they love through 11street, as well as introduce new ones that are hot off the shelves from Korea.”
On the growing demands of halal Korean food items, given the rising popularity of the cuisine and the local requirements, 11street also predicted that many would adhere to the Islamic dietary law as the majority in Malaysia are Muslims.
“The demand for halal products are on a rise and we took this effort up a notch by introducing products that are halal so that our Muslim shoppers continue to shop with us at ease,” he said.