What Is Mukbang? Trend From South Korea Explained

What is Mukbang – an artificial word and what is behind it

Strange things probably also need strange names and so two Korean words were thrown together without further ado, from which the artificial word mukbang emerged. The first part of mukbang comes from the Korean word for eat, meokneun, or 먹는.
The second part of the artificial word was derived from the word bang song or 방송. A media term that means something like transfer or sends.

• Basically, the composition of the Korean made-up word already explains what mukbang is all about: a protagonist who eats or shovels food in front of the camera. The followers can take part in how their stars eat up a lot of food in a very short time and honor the questionable “performance” with so-called “Star Balloons”.
• Why do the protagonists join the story? They try to make as much money as possible with it. Some of them do it very well. The stars of the scene are said to have so many fans that they earn around 10,000 euros a month. Most viewers only give a few cents per mukbang, but with a correspondingly high number of followers, it quickly adds up.
• What the followers expect from the questionable presentation has not really been clarified yet, but of course there are already various theses. Some experts theorize that this way singles don’t feel so lonely while eating. Others speculate that the viewer gets a taste experience in this way without consuming any calories himself.
• And there are also voices that simply assume exuberant decadence.

Mukbang – how it all supposedly began

It is no longer possible to find out exactly how mukbang came about. However, there is a rumor that the origin of the trend can be found in the gamer scene.

• It’s nothing unusual for gamers to film themselves playing games, but one day in 2007, one of the stars of the scene is said to have had a small hunger during a live broadcast. Of course, the good guy knew how to help himself and grabbed a cup of ramen noodles, which he then uninhibitedly slurped live and in color.
• This actually rather banal process is said to have caused so much enthusiasm in the scene that the new trend mukbang finally emerged. In 2009, the first mukbang live stream appeared on Afreeca.TV, the YouTube equivalent, and the leading streaming channel in South Korea. The trend then spread from South Korea to China and Taiwan and then conquered the rest of the world.
• On the streaming portal Twitch. tv, which belongs to Amazon, there has been a separate video and live stream category called “Social Eating” since mid-2016, and there are now enough corresponding performances on YouTube and other social networks.