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[NPR] Koreans have insatiable appetite for watching strangers eat

March 25, 2015

[NPR.ORG]

Move over, cooking shows. In Korea, the big food fad is eating shows, or mukbang. Korean viewers are so glued to watching strangers binge eating that the live-streamers consuming calories in front of webcams are becoming minor celebrities in Korean culture.

Rachel Ahn, who goes by “Aebong-ee” on her broadcasts, is kind of a big deal in the mukbang world. In fact, when we went to meet her, she wore a mask for fear fans would recognize her on the street.

Every weeknight at 9 p.m., Ahn sits down with enough food to feed a family of six. The night we visit, it was spicy noodles, spicy shrimp, steamed dumplings, fried dumplings and another platter of even spicier noodles, called fire zha jiang myeon.

She carefully displays the platters so they all fit in the frame, turns up lights and her mic, and when she goes live, about 200 of her fans are already chatting in a box next to her video stream. As she begins tearing into the food, the number of simultaneous viewers swells above 1,000.

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