GREAT NECK, N.Y.
TALKING about food is built into the job for first ladies: cookie recipes, menus for state dinners and, now, organic farming are all in their sphere of influence. But Kim Yoon-ok, the wife of the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, seemed to go beyond the call of duty on Sept. 21 when she picked up a spatula to cook pajeon — savory pancakes stuffed with seafood, scallions and slivered red peppers — for a group of American veterans of the Korean War.
To the consternation of her bodyguards, and in a moment that seemed more inspired by Rachael Ray than by Michelle Obama, the first lady plunged into the rows of guests to hand-feed bites of her pajeon to some silver-haired veterans and their wives.
“I wanted to give them a new taste of Korea as something positive and delicious,” she said in an interview afterward, her first with a member of the Western news media since her husband took office last year. (She spoke through an interpreter.) “From the war, they do not have many pleasant food memories.”
Mrs. Kim, along with Jean-Georges Vongerichten, the chef; Moon Bloodgood, a Korean-American actress; and Salvatore Scarlato, a local war veteran with a flamboyant cooking style, were all taking part in the South Korean government’s mission in the United States this week. While Mr. Lee met in closed sessions at the United Nations, his wife, 62, embarked on a new career in the field of culinary diplomacy.
The government’s Korean Cuisine to the World campaign began in April, with official goals that include quadrupling the number of Korean restaurants abroad and lifting Korean food into the “top five rank of world cuisines” by 2017. Putting aside that such a ranking system does not exist, the campaign shows how seriously food is now taken by many governments, especially in Asia.
As sushi has served as a kind of cultural crowbar, opening doors for Japanese tourism, culture and exports, the South Korean Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has high hopes for bibimbap and bulgogi.
Bang Moon-kyu, a ministry official who is leading the campaign, said that it has about $10 million to spend in 2009, including grants and scholarships for South Koreans to travel and attend culinary school. The campaign has already established a research and development lab devoted to the popular street-food dish called tteokbokki, a garlicky, richly spiced dish of rice cakes bathed in red chili paste. Tteokbokki (pronounced duck-bo-key) got its own festival in March, spinning off from the larger annual Seoul festival of rice cakes, or tteok. “And tteokbokki is only the beginning,” he said.
“First was Chinese food in the U.S., then Japanese and Thai,” said Min Mon-hong, director of tourism for Korea. “Korean is the next big boom.”
At least seven arms of government, including the military, were represented at the Sept. 21 event, which took place at Leonard’s in Great Neck, a local venue for proms, weddings and bar mitzvahs. The catering, by the New York restaurant KumGangSan, was vastly more flavorful than the usual kosher fare.
As the cameras of the Korean news media clicked, Jean-Georges Vongerichten showed off his one-handed pajeon-flipping abilities. “I’ve been teaching him some sauces and marinades,” said Mr. Vongerichten’s wife, Marja, who is Korean-American. “I think he would do great things with gochujang,” she said, referring to the spicy, fermented paste of ripe red chili peppers that is one of the basic seasonings of the Korean kitchen.
New York City is viewed by the campaign’s officials as a vast field of opportunity for shaping world opinion about Korean food. Although the city lacks a truly ambitious, transporting Korean restaurant, the flavors have made major inroads here. At the Momofuku restaurants, David Chang made his name by layering the intense flavors of Korea into Japanese and American dishes; at Ssam Bar, his version of tteokbokki is crossbred with Italian gnocchi in a light, fiery, herb-spiked pork sauce. New York Hotdog in Greenwich Village serves hot dogs topped with bulgogi (redundant, but tasty) and burgers with kimchi.
For many years, authentic Korean food was perceived, even among Koreans, as too spicy, too garlicky and too sour for the world stage. (The strong smell of kimchi was a running joke among the American veterans on Monday). In South Korea, exotica like pizza and hamburgers became fashionable once the country began to recover from the devastation of the war years.
But high-end restaurants in Seoul are now turning away from Western food and toward Korean tradition, drawing on both everyday snacks like pajeon and painstaking arts like the making of tteok, sticky rice pounded into a dizzying array of shapes, colors and flavors.
Making tteok, like almost all cooking in Korea, was traditionally done by women; hundreds of female slaves and workers were employed by the kitchens of the royal court during the Joseon dynasty, which ruled Korea from 1392 to 1910. “The court cuisine has become trendy in the last few years,” said Michael Pettid, the author of “Korean Cuisine: An Illustrated History.” “More people can afford to eat things once reserved for the elite, like tteok.”
Last week on 32nd Street in Manhattan, where Korean restaurants are clustered, Eun-joo Song, a Korean-American student at Parsons the New School for Design, expressed doubt about the need for any official campaign. “I think the restaurants here can speak for themselves,” she said, gesturing at storefronts advertising barbecued beef, organic tofu and handmade dumplings. “Governments can’t tell people what to like.”
Although Mrs. Kim’s official role was to promote Korean food, she did use her platform to raise a tender political topic. “You all look very healthy to me,” she said, gazing out at the veterans in their blue dress uniforms. “You might live to see the reunification of the two Koreas.”
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