Why Japan Is Tilting Toward Samsung and Korean Food

The iPhone once completely dominated the Japanese market, but now carrying a Galaxy has become a very ordinary sight.

This change began as Samsung's foldable phones gradually eroded the Japanese market. While iPhone did not offer a foldable product line, Galaxy took over this niche.

According to Lee Eo-ryeong's writings, Japanese people show a compaction-oriented tendency to minimize space while packing in all functions. This tendency appears throughout Japan's cultural history. One example is that the three-fold umbrella was first developed in Japan, the result of an effort to fit full functionality into limited space. The Walkman is the same: it packed the functions of a radio and a cassette player into a small portable device.

Seen from this cultural-historical background, how appealing would a foldable phone be to a compaction-minded Japanese consumer? The iPhone, lacking a foldable feature, inevitably fell behind on this aesthetic preference.

When selling Galaxy, Samsung removes markings such as 'Made in Korea' and puts the brand front and center. Japanese people who have a poor perception of Korea either buy Galaxy without knowing it is a Korean product, or know it and psychologically avoid it.

However, younger generations who are well versed in the Korean Wave fully recognize that Galaxy is a Samsung product, yet their positive perception of Korea actually serves as a reason to buy. As a result, regardless of the overall perception of Korea, Galaxy keeps expanding its share of the Japanese market.

Japan's soup dishes are very limited in variety, mostly miso soup and clear soup. Korea, by contrast, keeps its diversity alive as soup dishes like samgyetang, soft tofu stew, and yukgaejang keep newly emerging as trends.

Seaweed soup alone comes in more than 100 varieties. Depending on how you count, there can be 2,000 to 3,000. Considering that 148 shellfish species are eaten on the Korean Peninsula, the variety of clam seaweed soup alone approaches nearly infinite.

As the proteins in dried seaweed change, umami compounds form. Stir-frying seaweed in sesame oil or perilla oil creates yet another layer of umami. Pouring in water and boiling it produces a third.

Shellfish release succinic acid, and 70% of clam broth comes from the shell. Italian pasta also extracts flavor from shells through the same principle. The depth of many layers of umami stacking up like this does not exist in Japanese food.

Chinese historical records note that the people of the Goguryeo era on the Korean Peninsula were the first in the world to eat seaweed. This was an inevitable choice for survival in the Peninsula's harsh natural environment.

Amid the severe harshness of winter and spring, people had to dry food for storage, pickle it in salted fish, make pickles, and make kimchi. At each stage of these preservation and cooking processes, umami layered up, and as a result, a deep food system that is today's Korean food culture developed.

Japanese cuisine is limited to types such as sushi, ramen, katsu, donburi, udon, and curry. These are consumed in rotation and repeated. Korean food, by contrast, has so many kinds that you can eat different dishes and different soups and not repeat the same thing for a whole year.

After Japanese people experience Korean soup culture, Korean food comes to be seen as a contemporary world where new products keep emerging. Japanese cuisine, by contrast, feels to young generations like the image of a slow country.

The jeotgal (salted seafood) that Japanese people encounter daily is very limited, about five kinds including squid jeotgal. Among them, the most famous, myeongnanjeot (mentaiko), has an interesting origin.

All of Japan's mentaiko culture began with one Japanese person who learned how to make myeongnanjeot at Busan's Jagalchi Market. Jeotgal varieties at Jagalchi number in the hundreds, of which only a small fraction are known in Japan. This means there remains much room for Korean food culture to spread further.

This is completely different from 20 to 30 years ago, when a Korean could earn over 3 million won a month just by washing dishes in Japan.

Now it is more profitable for young Japanese to work part-time in Korea than in Japan. Combined with the reality that Japan's cost of living, especially public transportation, is far more expensive than Korea's, the move to Korea is accelerating.

The share of Japanese staff is especially high at Japanese restaurants such as sushi bars and izakayas. The structure is such that the 'authentically Japanese' interiors and service they offer become the restaurant's competitive edge.

They have begun to question why they should keep staying in Japan.

Vietnamese workers are moving to Australia or Korea. This signifies that Japan has changed from a country that accepts foreigners into a country that foreigners leave. Japan is losing its appeal for keeping them, even as it depends on foreign labor.

The reason lies in the historical experience of the fathers' generation. Not so long ago, Koreans too had to go abroad and do hard labor just to make a living.

This historical memory and empathy lead to a relatively kind attitude toward today's foreign workers in Korea. Unlike Japan's delicate social rules, Korea's attitude toward foreigners reflects an emotional foundation of 'we too have been through such times.'

Wages would not rise, but prices would not rise either. Low-wage stagnation was offset by low inflation.

But as the weak yen persisted, import prices began to rise. Escaping deflation is good, but as wages failed to rise at the same time, this implicit contract became like a torn-up contract. Japan is now stuck suffering only the pain of inflation, having finished with the pain of deflation.

Japanese companies' overseas profitability remains high, but a structure has solidified in which that wealth does not trickle down to ordinary people. The movement of Japanese workers to Korea and the departure of foreign workers reflects this structural problem.

Japan complains that foreign workers are not coming due to labor shortages, yet its own system is driving foreigners away. This is because a policy is being pushed to raise residence costs for foreign workers to somewhere around 2 to 3 million won per year.

This is the result of a psychology reflected in policy, one that dislikes foreigners sending money earned in Japan to support their families back home. Economically it is close to suicidal, but choosing psychological satisfaction over economic logic will ultimately ruin the Japanese economy.

Why does the Japanese government enforce foreigner-related policies that are clearly harmful to the economy? To soothe Japanese voters who are currently very irritated. It means government policy has turned into populism that prioritizes voters' psychological satisfaction over economic rationality.