Hungry: An Excerpt

Mukbang is a combination of the Korean words for eating (mukja) and broadcasting (bang-song). Mukbang videos bring in millions of viewers, sometimes hundreds of thousands at a time, who watch individuals eat. These performers are called broadcast jockeys, or BJs for short. Most mukbang streams showcase a BJ consuming large amounts of food, be it a pile of fast-food hamburgers stacked in a tower or a vat of deep red tteokbokki, where oblong white rice cakes bob among a hot pepper and anchovy stew. But the quantity of food is not the only draw. (“I am not really a heavy eater among mukbang BJs,” popular mukbang BJ Min told me. “Some people can finish ten packages of instant noodles, but I can only eat five.”)

Viewers home in on the BJ’s enthusiasm for eating, their consumption tactics, and their personalities. Many BJs, use microphones that sit just below their mouths, which allows their mastication to be picked up with such clarity that viewers can virtually feel their own molars cracking through the shell of an orange crab leg or sinking into squares of fleshy meat.

Some mukbang BJs also film beauty tutorials, livestream their car rides, and develop recipe videos. Min livestreams her vacations, shopping trips, and other escapades that she thinks her viewers will enjoy. But traditional eating videos remain her true bread and butter.

The trend of Korean mukbang became widely popular around 2012. According to the Korea Press Foundation’s “2016 Youth Media Usage Survey,” over a quarter of South Korean teenagers have watched a mukbang broadcast.*, 1

Many mukbang BJs make a good living from their routine performances. On the South Korean social media site AfreecaTV, viewers can buy virtual “star balloons” for about ten US cents to send to the BJs. With thousands, = sometimes millions, of viewers, these gratuities can add up to something significant. Many fans also send real-life treats in the mail, like Ddungnyeo’s gifted octopus. One of the most notorious mukbang performers, a mysteriously fit Millennial who goes by the name Banzz, has over three million YouTube subscribers, and rumor has it that his annual income exceeds $8 million, in large part due to his sponsored product posts, which have their own category on his YouTube channel.

Since 2016, the mukbang trend has proliferated outside of Korea, quickly becoming a global phenomenon. About 20 percent of Banzz’s viewership streams in from abroad. 2 Stateside, one of the most successful mukbang BJs is Gen Xer Bethany Gaskin, who goes by the nickname Bloveslife. An African American mother of two living in the American Midwest, Bloveslife’s 1.3 million YouTube subscribers support her branded apparel and product lines. Up in Canada, Veronica Wang, who also has over a million YouTube subscribers, shovels bathtub quantities of ramen into her tiny frame. With a simple search, you’ll find people of all different backgrounds doing mukbang: families, straight and gay couples, devoted vegans, junk food enthusiasts, and black, white, Asian, and biracial individuals all chowing down for anyone to watch.

“Do your parents understand what you do?” I asked Min as we sat on the floor around her coffee table before her nightly broadcast, sipping iced coffee and nibbling on sticky pastel sweets. Hyunjee translated Min’s responses.

Min tilted her bobblehead face to the side and shrugged. “They vaguely know what I am doing,” she said, noting that the “elderly” are less acquainted with mukbang. “My parents learned that I am famous two years ago. My mom noticed that many people recognize me and ask me to take photos with them.”

Min’s street recognition goes to show just how deeply mukbang culture has infiltrated the Korean media scene, and yet, many still observe the trend with confoundment: Why are droves of people watching strangers eat?

Some attribute the wild popularity to a growing diet culture and call mukbang “surrogate satisfaction.” 3 This theory has merit, says Min, who believes that, at first, her audience clicked on her stream to gawk at her ability to eat ten pounds of sushi and fried chicken in one sitting. But over time, she says, as people got to know her, her viewership changed. Now, a regular cohort of two hundred people participate in the nightly chats that take place after the mukbang performance.

***

“The act of creating daily interactions with other people such as family members and friends is a primitive act for human survival and life,” two researchers from Seoul Women’s University outline in an academic article published by the Korean Journal of Broadcasting and Telecommunication Studies. 33 Yet, they note, “when that ritual is suppressed or unsatisfactory,” mukbang can fill the void, becoming a “surrogate fulfillment” of our primitive needs. They call the phenomenon “a kind of ‘healing therapy’ that fulfills hunger and emotional hunger” at the same time.

A study by the Korea Health Promotion Institute found that 38 percent of thirtysomethings say the reason they watch mukbang is because they simply have no one else to eat with. 34

“I give viewers the sensation of eating with a friend,” mukbang BJ Banzz has said, explaining the popularity of his mukbang channel. 35

Min relayed a similar sentiment: “Many people live alone and they feel lonely when they have a meal by themselves, so they need a pal,” she told me as we sat around her coffee table. “They turn on mukbang and feel they are having a meal together.”

Most of Min’s fans are Millennials who live by themselves, she tells me. Other BJs report similar viewership demographics. Some say that their viewers prop up phones on their dining tables and stream mukbang while eating dinner so that they can feel like they are eating with someone else. Some BJs provide the night’s menu in advance so that fans can order or prepare the same thing.

With belonging needs unmet, many hang out online in search of camaraderie. And mukbang is unique in its ability to conjure a sense of intimacy.

“They like to see me eat, but we also have lots of conversations,” BJ Lee Chang-hyun, who boasts nearly two million subscribers on his YouTube channel, told BBC News of his followers. 36 “We talk about everything. I even give them counseling about problems they might have, so we have a real relationship.” 37

The relationships between BJs and their viewers do not adhere to the typical performer/viewer roles. For example, viewers may provide feedback to the BJ on their performance, or offer tips on how to operate equipment. “Slide the controls to the bottom for better sound,” one spectator notes as a BJ struggles to improve audio quality. “Tell us . . .what the chicken tastes like—don’t just eat it,” another person critiques.

Communities develop around the BJs, and often, fans bond and converse with each other. Do you remember that amazing junk food from the ’80s? a BJ may ask, after which chatroom participants will chime in and create a dialogue not just with the BJ but also among themselves. Sometimes, viewers even develop inside jokes that the BJ is unaware of. Oh and Choi cite one example of this in their paper: “When a ‘mukbang’ BJ adjusted the camera, one viewer noticed a funny calendar on the wall. While the BJ did not notice, viewers were joking among themselves: ‘Did you see the calendar picture? . . . How cheesy!’ Those who did not miss the moment were laughing and recognized each other, saying, ‘You have good eyes! That made my day.’” The virtual community ends up expanding far beyond the broadcast jockey, and envelops all those logged on at the same time.

Ultimately, many viewers develop a sense of kinship with one another and the BJs they follow. “I feel a sense of belonging to this virtual community,” one interviewee in another study says of her mukbang community, noting: “I consider it a cure for loneliness.” 39

NOTES

  1. “10dae ch’o˘ngsonyun midio˘ yiyongchosa” [Survey of media usage of teenagers]. Korea Press Foundation,
  2. Retrieved from https://www.kpf.or.kr/site/kpf/research/selectMedia PdsView.do?seq=573958.

* The public obsession with mukbang has encouraged more traditional media mavens to get in on the game. South Korea’s television networks are now crammed with food-centric programming, such as Tasty Guys, which showcases celebrities eating; Please Take Care of My Refrigerator, where Korean chefs compete to create impromptu dishes that feature ingredients found inside a guest star’s personal refrigerator; and the talk show Wednesday Food Talk.

  1. Moon, Young Eun, Ji Soo Shim, and Dong Sook Park. “‘My Favorite Broadcasting Jockey Is. . .’ Interpretive Analysis on the ‘Mukbang’ Viewing Experience.” Media & Society 25, no. 2 (May 2017): 58–101. http://www.riss.kr/search/detail/DetailView.do?p_mat_type=1a0202e37d52c72d&control_no=4ea33df677dd57d3c85d2949c297615a.
  1. Jang, Yoon Jae et al. “Need for Interaction or Pursuit of Information and Entertainment?: The Relationship among Viewing Motivation, Presence, Parasocial Interaction, and Satisfaction of Eating and Cooking Broadcasts.” Korean Journal of Broadcasting and Telecommunication Studies 30, no 4 (2016): 152–185. http://www.dbpia.co.kr/Article/NODE06735346.
  2. Borowiec, Steven. “Honbap: Eating Alone Is a New Norm.” KOREA EXPOSE, May 29, 2017. https://www.koreaexpose.com/honbap-eating-alone-new-norm-korea/.
  3. Borowiec, Steven. “Eating for an Online Audience in South Korea.” Al Jazeera, 2015. https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2015/what-food-means-to-me -around-the -world-ajeats/index.html.
  4. 창현거리노래방KPOP COVER. BJ창현[동대문 엽기떡볶이+주먹밥 먹방] 160319. Changhyun Mukbang Eating Show. Accessed January 17, 2019. https:// www.youtube.com/channel/UCPJmHR4CG_lRuVwKCo0kjjg.

 

  1. Evans, Stephen. “The Koreans Who Televise Themselves Eating Dinner.” BBC News, February 5, 2015. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31130947.

 

  1. Moon, Young Eun, Ji Soo Shim, and Dong Sook Park. “‘My Favorite Broadcasting Jockey Is . . .’—Interpretive Analysis on the ‘Mukbang’ Viewing Experience.”