A word from one-person media, and a 2001 start on television

Mukbang, the essay says, means, as the name already suggests, an “eating broadcast.” Television programmes that travelled the country, or the world, to find and introduce famous restaurants have long existed; nowadays, however, the focus is more on the look of people eating than on introducing a restaurant. In fact, the word itself is said to have its start less in television programmes than in one-person media such as YouTube and Afreeca TV. Ordinary people, not only celebrities or broadcast producers, can earn an income through personal broadcasts on the internet, and that advantage and appeal have made YouTube and Afreeca TV enormously popular in Korea and have led the growth of the media industry. Among the kinds of personal broadcast, mukbang is named as one of the most popular.

The number of personal internet broadcasts on Afreeca TV is said to average about 5,000 live at a time, of which some 10 to 15 percent are mukbang. That figure stays as a “known” claim in the notes, and is not treated here as a later official total. After mukbang’s fierce growth in one-person media, its popularity on television programmes has also soared. Unlike mukbang on one-person media, which often consists mainly of one person eating a great deal of tasty food, television programmes have to include a wider range of content about food, so most of them introduce restaurants, taste and judge dishes, or cook with well-known chefs.

Korean mukbang on television, the notes say, begins in 2001 with Find! Delicious TV on MBC; by the time of writing, each channel had one or more mukbang programmes in place. That year stays in 2001. Representative names include Please Take Care of My Refrigerator on JTBC, in which famous chefs cook from the ingredients in a celebrity’s refrigerator brought into the studio; Wednesday Food Talk on tvN and Baek Jong-won’s Three Great Kings on SBS, which travel the country to judge well-known restaurants; and Koreans’ Table on KBS1.

Let’s Eat at eleven, Baek Jong-won’s house rice, and Yeosu hairtail

Mukbang is also easily found in dramas and films, not only in variety and current-affairs programmes. The tvN drama series Let’s Eat, with Seo Hyun-jin, Lee Su-kyung and Yoon Du-jun among the cast, weaves eating naturally into the story and was warmly received. Various figures appear, including a well-known restaurant blogger and office workers, and the series portrays an age of living alone. In the drama the characters eat tasty food; each episode sets a mukbang menu — pizza, chicken, sushi, seolleongtang, tangsuyuk — and shows the actors eating, in the tasty colours typical of a drama camera. The programme was broadcast at 11 at night, and so also stirred many viewers’ desire for a late-night snack.

If one were asked, the notes say, to name the person most in the spotlight in the food trade in recent years, many would think of Baek Jong-won. He is a cooking specialist who owns many food franchises, including Paik’s Coffee, an anchovy-noodle house, Hanshin Pocha, Hong Kong Banjeom and Bonga, and he has appeared in Three Great Kings and in House Rice Teacher Baek, leading, in this telling, the culture of mukbang on Korean television. House Rice Teacher Baek is shot in a studio dressed like a home kitchen; he shares his recipes and tastes the food. The point is that, though he owns so many franchises, he does not cook dishes that need showy or difficult technique: as the title suggests, the emphasis is on house rice, recipes that ordinary people, not chefs, can easily make at home. One recent recipe was a stir-fried ramyeon made from a packet of ramyeon, with spring onion, onion and bean sprouts — cheap, everyday ingredients that many people can easily buy. With the great development of smartphones and social media, people can reach these videos easily even while they are on the move, so even a student living alone without a television at home, or someone on the subway wondering what to have for dinner, can watch and take the recipe.

Koreans’ Table on KBS1 is a representative food documentary. It travels to famous foods of each region of Korea, and explains not only the method and the tradition but also the science in the food. As suits a documentary, it does not merely pick a tasty restaurant: each episode introduces the food by tying it to the geography, character and history of the place, and it leaves out Western, Japanese or Chinese food in favour of Korea’s own traditional dishes. The most recently broadcast episode named here, “A silvery return, hairtail is always right,” introduced hairtail dishes of the Yeosu area in South Jeolla. “This year,” the notes say, news of the first great hairtail catch in twenty years brought fishermen from all over the country to Yeosu; that “this year” stays as the notes word it. Geomundo, about two and a half hours by boat from Yeosu, is an island famous for silver hairtail. The programme introduced hairtail stewed, as sashimi and grilled, among the local specialities, together with Yeosu’s culture, history and geography, and, with lyrical background music typical of the country, quietly passed on information and taste, without famous celebrities tasting or cooking on screen.

One-person households in 2010 and 2015, and two attempted causes

The Wall Street Journal, the notes say, saw this Korean mukbang culture as a result of the rise in single-person households; the Chosun Ilbo is cited for 2014. In Korean society, among the cultures of clothing, food and housing, food is commonly said to take the largest share, and mealtime with the family has long been held important. As one-person households have increased for various reasons, time spent eating together has shrunk, and people, in this telling, feel a bond from television programmes.

According to a Statistics Korea survey of family form, the share of one-person households among all households rose from 15.8 percent in 2010 to 21.3 percent in 2015. Those figures stay in 2010 and 2015, and are not treated here as a later official total.

Another study, from a political-economic view, ties the enthusiasm to difficult economic circumstances in Korea. When the economy is hard, Engel’s coefficient — the share of living costs that goes on food — is said to rise; people’s desire for food then rises, and mukbang naturally gains popularity. Many studies have tried to pin down why Koreans are so enthusiastic about mukbang, the writer says, but a clear cause has not yet been found. The same Korean essay, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. A student essay on mukbang as an “eating broadcast,” with a start in YouTube and Afreeca TV, and an Afreeca figure of about 5,000 live personal broadcasts, 10 to 15 percent of them mukbang, left as a “known” claim in the notes.
2. A 2001 start on MBC with Find! Delicious TV, later programmes including Please Take Care of My Refrigerator, Wednesday Food Talk, Baek Jong-won’s house-rice recipes, Let’s Eat at 11 at night, and a Koreans’ Table episode on Yeosu hairtail.
3. A Wall Street Journal reading cited via the Chosun Ilbo for 2014, and Statistics Korea shares of one-person households, 15.8 percent in 2010 and 21.3 percent in 2015, left in those years.

Last updated: 14 November 2026