A lot of Korean restaurants suddenly opened up in the US recently.
They took a page from the Thai tourism playbook. Thailand launched an initiative in 2002 that’s been termed gastrodiplomacy. TLDR: They supported Thai people who wanted to open Thai restaurants abroad with money and training.
The thought was: If more people abroad like Thai food, more people will travel to Thailand. It worked well.
The Koreans saw that and copied, and leveled that concept up. They launched a 1 billion dollar fund to promote Korean pop culture.
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