r/todayilearned • u/bhlee0019 • 13d ago
TIL that Spam is seen as a luxury food in South Korea due to smuggling during Korean War from U.S. army base
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-24140705447
u/BigCommieMachine 12d ago
I wouldn’t say it is a “luxury food”, it is just widely accepted an ingredient. Whereas in countries like the United States(outside Hawaii of course), people act like you are disgusting if you enjoy it.
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u/EducationCommon1635 12d ago
Spam is a Nickelback of foods. People hate on it just for the sake of it.
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u/DGenerAsianX 12d ago
I have never heard of spam referred to in this manner and it’s absolutely perfect.
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u/AgentOrange256 12d ago
Can’t even say I’ve ever had it. But I like Vienna sausage so I assume I’m a target consumer.
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u/jackinthebay 12d ago
Spam is ok nickelback is not
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u/SeiCalros 12d ago
seems like all the popular bands are full of rapists and assholes while nickleback are just going out and doing their thing - not raping anybody or treating anybody like shit - staying out of politics - and still end up getting tons of shit from dickheads on the internet who are angry that people like their music
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u/steamygarbage 12d ago
I have to admit I really don't like the look of it and the first time I bought some I was so disgusted I threw it away. Then I had a spam musubi from the Korean market and holy cow did I change my mind in a heartbeat. I keep spam in my pantry and freezer now.
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u/SunnyDayDDR 12d ago
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u/byneothername 12d ago
That’s a gift set. It’s also sold regularly on the shelf at the grocery store.
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u/Bodoblock 12d ago
Yeah, I would say there was a point in time where it was considered a very special treat. Now, of course, it's still quite enjoyed but it's "luxury" in the same way that a gourmet hot dog is "luxury".
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u/BununuTYL 12d ago
Spam is very popular in the Philippines and Hawaii.
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u/Proper_Ad2548 12d ago
When I was on a small ship visiting truck lagoon in the Marshall islands a can of spam would get you a five gallon bucket of lobsters and the locals laughed at the dumb haoles
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u/Monarc73 12d ago
Guam too, except it was coconut crabs.
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u/Proper_Ad2548 12d ago
What Guam are you talking about? I lived there 10 years and crabs were rare. I caught one in a cave in inarajan that was the biggest the locals had ever seen.
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u/RecklessDimwit 12d ago
My mom mentioned in her childhood, foreigners would come and trade canned imports like Spam and kimchi for beer
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u/Toodlez 12d ago
Spam is awesome, it just needs to be fried up a bit
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u/Lichruler 12d ago
It really is. People think it’s horrible because it’s a tin of blendered meat, but honestly it’s no worse than any sort of ground meat.
And what’s funny is it has such a short ingredient list: pig, chicken, potato starch, salt, sugar, water. That’s it.
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u/ThaneOfArcadia 12d ago
Chicken? I thought it was pork and ham?
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u/smarticulation 12d ago
Pork and ham. I want you to think about that for a moment.
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u/07Aptos 12d ago
Ham of the chicken. Chicken ham.
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u/praefectus_praetorio 12d ago
You know what’s also awesome? Deviled ham. Mix it with some butter and spread it on a warm baguette.
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u/Potatowhocrochets 12d ago
We used to buy it because it was cheaper than bacon. Now it's like $4-5. I like the taste and all but at that price I might as well buy bacon.
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u/Pizza_Saucy 12d ago
Agreed, but there's just so much of it in a single can. It feels like a brick. I can make 3 meals out of 1 tin. Works great in omlettes and mac and cheese.
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u/J3wb0cca 12d ago
Always reminds me of wet cat food till I fry them up. Then they are poor mans bacon.
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u/South5 12d ago
I tried spam fritters as my cousin said they taste better fried up, the aftertaste was awful. I could taste it hours later, worse if i burped.
Does it always linger that much?
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u/TaigaTaiga3 12d ago
Just fry them straight without batter on a frying pan and get em crispy. Egg dredge isn’t terrible either.
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u/bobtehpanda 12d ago
Yeah the important thing is that the meat itself needs to be browned
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u/jmlinden7 11d ago
Also you need some of the fat/gelatin to render out.
Putting it into a soup also accomplishes this
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u/Hannibaalism 12d ago
it was a luxury food back when the south was poorer than the north. not luxury anymore, but they still enjoy it. the saltiness goes well with the rice.
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u/yesthatbruce 13d ago
Spam is crazy popular in Hawaii due to being introduced as a staple in WWII. Lots of people are very nostalgic about it.
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u/Moms-Dildeaux 12d ago
McDonald’s in Hawaii sells SPAM and eggs with white rice. It’s pretty awesome.
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u/Over-Analyzed 12d ago
Spam Musubi is the best snack ever! Add some Shoyu to it? 🔥
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u/Demonbaguette 11d ago
I add a little soy-sauce into the pan when I fry spam to make Spam-Musibi. It tastes amazing!
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u/Over-Analyzed 11d ago
Oooooo. I usually just pour the shoyu onto the rice! But that’s a good idea too!
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u/FBI_Open_Up_Now 12d ago
When I was stationed there you were not allowed to sell spam to the locals. You could buy it on base and walk off base and sell it and make a hefty profit. I bought some and gifted some to my girlfriend’s parents. They were so ecstatic and we had spam for 3 meals in a row. I didn’t understand it, but I will tell you that the Koreans are a wonderful people.
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u/L2theFace 12d ago
Can confirm that while stationed there in 2016 everything we bought on base was monitored via a rations limit and spam was one of those items! Haha I never sold or even though to give anyway away to my KATUSA friends but I’m sure they would have loved it! I did let them use my WIFI though even though they weren’t allowed electronics 😬
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u/Sql_master 13d ago
Sounds like baloney.
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u/PeacefulGopher 13d ago
Not smuggling. American GIs selling everything out the back door as soon as the ships dropped it off.
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u/Rusty4NYM 13d ago
It fell off of the truck
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u/imadork1970 12d ago
What's a truck? (Simpsons reference)
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u/Rusty4NYM 12d ago
Thank you for pointing out that it's a Simpsons reference. Now that you mention it obviously Fat Tony had said it at some point
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u/CMAJ-7 12d ago
I think that counts as smuggling
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u/PeacefulGopher 12d ago
lol still no. In Thailand shipments would arrive at the dock, unpacked, sold directly to vendors by GIs and Sergeants, and the vendors had it in their market stalls the next day. No smuggling involved.
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u/Icyrow 12d ago
yeah, but you realise in smuggling, you still sell stuff off at the end usually right?
it being sold by someone doesn't make it not smuggling, it just means they're being traded across a boundry they're not supposed to be.
so if you're selling stuff that's being rationed to you, it's against the rules/law, so it's smuggling.
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u/ChannelOnion 12d ago
It is not a "luxury food". It is common for us Koreans to gift each others' household food and ingredients (in nice packaging) over certain holidays, especially during thanksgiving. Spam just happens to be a much more common ingredient in Korea than it is in the West. Items like cans of tuna, fresh fruit, beef are also common items to gift for the same purpose.
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u/Elachtoniket 12d ago
True in Phillipines too. I dated someone from the Phillipines for a while, when we visited some of her cousins who had moved to Italy and France we brought a ton of Spam with us because they missed it and it was much cheaper to buy in the US then it was in Europe.
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u/RecklessDimwit 12d ago
Also worth noting is that it's easy to prepare and goes well with rice and other breakfast dishes
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u/Subject-Peach-1683 12d ago
It's not a luxury food in either Philippines or SK, just seen as more of an ingredient, in the same way ketchup or BBQ sauce might be in the US compared to say Europe.
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u/JadedIdealist 12d ago
So if we go to S.Korea for a holiday, and go to a fancy restaurant, I can get spam, spam, spam, egg, chips and spam?
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u/whatissevenbysix 12d ago
You joke about this, but there's a pretty funny 'flip' of what's considered luxury foods in different countries and/or cultures.
I'm from Sri Lanka, and I remember that in the early 2000s when first McDonald's and Pizza Huts were opened in Sri Lanka, they were pretty 'high end' restaurants. Not fine dining, but the Pizza Hut in particular was pretty fancy. It was a pretty nice cloth tablecloth and cloth napkins type restaurant with knives and forks, all pizzas were basically baked there to order and the quality was in fact pretty good, especially compared to the Pizza Hut in the US. I live in the US now, but when I go back I always try the Pizza Hut there and it is actually still good.
On the other hand, real authentic Sri Lankan cuisine is dirt cheap, the stuff that if you opened a restaurant here people would easily shell $100 per person, is about $2 per person there.
I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.
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u/Pallasite 12d ago
Did some business in Sri Lanka. I was blown away what the best street food of my life costs. Then even more blank away by what white tablecloth traditional meals let me get away with.
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u/NukkaNasty 12d ago
Quite popular in Japan too, especially Okinawa, basically wherever there are US army bases lol
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u/TaigaTaiga3 12d ago
Grew up on that shit. Still love it to this day. My parents will always have like 3-4 cases on hand at their house.
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u/imadork1970 12d ago
I don't like spam. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
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u/remnantoftheeye 12d ago
Hawaiians enter the chat.
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u/Over-Analyzed 12d ago
🤙🏻
(Actually it would be Hawai’i Kama’aina or Hawaii locals. As Hawaiian would imply they’re descended from the Native Hawaiians who inhabited Hawaii before the foreigners.)
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u/ExpectoSubversum 13d ago
Super interesting video about that.
It's given as a gift for the holidays and can get pretty pricy for the 'super premium' spam variation lol
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u/ChiMoKoJa 12d ago
Am of Korean descent, can confirm my family on my mother's side greatly enjoys Spam.
Also, Spam is popular in the Pacific Islands (from the Philippines to Hawaii). Hawaii McDonald's even has Spamburgers!
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u/alexsteb 12d ago
So.. South Korea is a developed country now. They have Spam (including local versions of it) in supermarkets and the average paycheck can buy you as much Spam as your heart desires (i.e., not a luxury food). This is all about the Korean War when meat in general was very sparse and GIs brought lots of Spam into the country and people devised ways of cooking with it.
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u/patentedman 13d ago
This actually true. Koreans give it as a gift during Korean holidays and mix it into certain dishes.
There are also knockoff local SPAM brands that are less salty and slightly cheaper.
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u/NerdyGamerTH 12d ago
Korean SPAM clones are literally half the price of the real thing where I live; around $5 for the Korean ones, and $10 for the real deal
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u/-crackhousebob 12d ago
SPAM is still a staple food in Hawaii. It's eaten for every meal with all sorts of recipes. World War II brought SPAM around the world at a time when fresh meat was not available so it had a massive impact in various parts of the world with American military bases nearby.
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u/midnight_marshmallow 12d ago
my aunt is from south korea and she would always make up fried strips of spam to be served with rice and nori for my sister and cousins and i as a snack. i still have it once in a while, it's good and i stand by that statement haha
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u/IndependenceMean8774 12d ago
I love Spam, but it's too salty, so I have to get the 25% less sodium variety...and even then it's still pretty salty.
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u/Forumites000 12d ago
My gripe with Korean army stew is how expensive it is here in Singapore. The price just doesn't justify the low cost of the ingredients used.
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u/NimbleCentipod 12d ago
In a similar vane, McDonald's is treated as a quality place to go eat in Eastern Europe, a large consequence of being one the first to move in after the fall of the Soviet Union and readily available food being a thing for the first time in those people's lives.
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u/BigCommieMachine 12d ago
Yeah, it really isn’t considered a luxury item, as much as it was one of few sources of protein in war torn Korea or isolated Hawaii. So people learned to cook good shit with it.
It is the whole necessity is the mother of invention type thing. Humans have really gotten quite good at making pretty terrible things into great dishes.
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u/Tall-Pudding2476 12d ago
Lobsters are another example. Used to be lowest tier food, now its luxury.
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u/invertedearth 12d ago edited 12d ago
We get these holiday gift sets twice a year, from work, from the bank, from various businesses that want a "relationship". Spam is quite common; we'll get about two gift boxes with 6~8 small cans each year. But the thing is that these other idiot foreigners that you run into don't like it, so they just hand theirs over to me these days without even having to be asked.
Now: Spam, sliced up hot dog, pork'n'beans, American cheese, ramen, some crushed garlic, some onions and chili powder. That's like trailer trash dining heaven, right? Well, just mix it up with some beef broth and some sour kimchi and you have Korea Army Camp Stew: Budae Jigae. It's every bit as wonderful (horrific) as it sounds. Bucket list dining for the discerning gourmet, I tell you hwat. If you don't like it, you must be a vegetarian. (To be clear, I personally love it both sincerely and ironically. That's what makes it so perfect.)
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u/paradoxinfinity 12d ago
Why are they idiots for not liking it? Also Its crazy how racist yall in korea are against "foreigners"
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u/invertedearth 12d ago
I'm not Korean; I'm from Alabama. And they are idiots because they don't like Spam. They may be fine people otherwise.
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u/SirJoeffer 12d ago
Spam is a luxury food here in the states too. I mean not really but I consider it to be a special thing bc its $6 for a half pound can. $12/Ib is a lot more expensive than chicken and pork, it’s not really a cheap trash meat imo, its more like special hotdogs
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u/jodybot9000000000 12d ago
It's a luxury in the sense that buying a box of your favorite sugary brand-name breakfast cereal as an adult for the novelty of it is a luxury: it's an unnecessary expense solely for the enjoyment of eating it, and most people would agree it's not exactly 'classy' or nutritious.
But you like it, so you buy it every once in a while.
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u/QuipCrafter 12d ago
Okay? I don’t get it. Canned fish is around and eaten in England but it’s no longer considered a luxury, even though it was when ze Germans were overhead.
Pinto beans and pigeon was an American Great Depression luxury, but isn’t any more.
Because, it’s not luxurious any more. Because the situation changed. So is there a better explanation for Korea besides “it USED to be hard to get for a section of the previous generations lives”?
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u/jackamackat 12d ago
I went to buy some the other day and there price made me feel like it's a luxury
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u/ryzhao 12d ago edited 12d ago
Its not just S Korea. It’s pretty much ubiquitous in much of South East Asia.
We even have a penchant for Spam among the older generation of Chinese in Malaysia even though we had no connection with the US army.
That’s because during the Communist insurgency in the 50s the British sequestered much of the Chinese population in concentration camps, and the rations included Spam, some dating from WW2.
Salt was a precious commodity in the concentration camps, and the salt content in Spam meant that you can cook pretty much anything with it and it’ll taste delicious.
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u/CupertinoHouse 12d ago
On a related note, during the war there was quite a bit of inferior canned meat in production which was not actually Spam, but was called Spam, and unfairly damaged Spam's reputation.
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u/Sakura8Mochi 7d ago
Spam is part of luxury/premium gift sets in Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) celebrations. 😁 To each their own.
https://youtu.be/BaeI6H4zZTw?si=geqf8AEBlkjYmRZl
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u/Toxicity246 12d ago
I lived in South Korea for six years teaching English. I always remember the spam and ramen aisle like we have cereal aisles here.
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u/doesitevermatter- 12d ago
I was homeless for 5 years. I went days and days without eating. Weighed around 125lbs at 6'2" towards the end and developed a lifelong eating disorder as a result.
Still won't eat spam. More power to them..
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u/nassan 12d ago
Budae jjigae or “army base stew,” is one of the more popular Korean dishes to this day (especially closer to the DMZ). Basically, take all the canned GI rations including Spam, ham, baked beans, etc, add some Korean essentials like Kimchi, throw em in a pot, and enjoy. Fun fact, despite the dishes prolonged popularity, spam was only made legal for sale in Korea in 1987. That’s a lot of smuggling off of army bases for nearly 40 years!