Tipping the fat hat to Brian in Jeollanam-do, who has already put up excellent posts on the subject here and here, the JoongAng Daily reports that the Korean government has had to do a wee bit of backpedaling on the whole “drunken rice” thing, thanks to some Netizen tongue-lashing:

The Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries held a public contest to develop an official English-language nickname for makgeolli, and last week it announced the winner: “Drunken Rice.” In second and third place were “Makcohol” and “Markelixir.”

The ministry said in release earlier that the nickname should be easy and fun for foreigners to pronounce, and pledged to use the winning name in its marketing activities.

Soon after the results were released, however, the ministry’s Web site was bombarded with postings criticizing the move.

“Unlike in Korea, where alcohol drinking is generously accepted by society, the English word ‘drunken’ conveys considerably negative connotation. Besides, would you find it easy to understand wine if its origin countries called it ‘drunken grape’?” wrote Choi Hae-su.

Another citizen, Lee Jae-hong, wrote, “I live in Japan and nine out of 10 Japanese here know makgeolli as it is. Why are you trying to give it an English nickname when it is gradually gaining recognition?”

In response to the outcry, the ministry backed off, saying it won’t adopt the nickname after all, since “the event was meant to fan the makgeolli craze further among the general public,” according to a government official.

Instead, the Presidential Council on National Branding will come up with a simplified romanization of the word by the end of June, the official added, without providing details.

Why on earth they want to waste their time coming up with an alternate to the already well-established romanization systems, Fatman does not wish to know.  We’re exhausted with all the tomfoolery already.   But three cheers for the Netizens!

ORIGINAL POST:

Dear God, have mercy on us all.  Whoever is behind this deserves a mighty smiting.

Makgeolli is henceforth to be known as “Drunken Rice.”

canned makgeolli

This is so many shades of wrong Fatman doesn’t even know where to begin.  The Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MOFAFF) apparently thinks that a) foreigners (read here, westerners) are stupid and b) this will make it easy for those poor stupid foreigners.

Why is this such a dumb idea?  Let us count the ways:

  • First, the name fails at the most basic level by failing to communicate that the item at hand is a drink.  Seriously, “drunken rice” indicates that it is in fact, some kind of rice.  That would be FOOD.   Y’know, chopsticks/knife and fork/fingers as major route to consumption, instead of something you drink from a cup.  Kind of a big difference. Furthermore, there’s already a well known Chinese dish called “drunken chicken” so we’re even further away from communicating to non-Koreans what the hell 막걸리 actually is.  Epic, EPIC FAIL!
  • The fact that the new nickname is in (bad) English just demonstrates that the agencies involved are too wrapped up in marketing to western tourists, despite the fact that a huge hunk of the people who clamor for Korean food products and come here for tourism are other Asians.  The biggest current market for makgeolli outside Korea is . . . Japan.  And you know what name the drink is known under there?  The drink that has seen a major expansion of its market there?  マッコリ。 Makkori,  i.e. the same exact word.  Somehow, Fatman doesn’t think they’re thinking of the Japanese and their lust for ドファンケンライス (doraanken raisu)。
  • The Korean word is too hard for those poor stupid white foreigners and their too long-tongues?  Because if we look at the vast variety of foods with foreign origins floating around America, Canada, England, etc., you’ll see that the vast majority have retained their original, non-English names.  Pizza, sushi, pad thai, ratatouille, pho, masala, schnitzel, challa, borsch, tangine . . . all of these have distinctly non-English names, and oftentimes non-obvious pronunciations for monolingual English speakers.  And yet, nobody is trying to give them “easier” pronunciations (ala “topokki” instead of ddeokpokki) or fake names that somebody just made up to be cute and patronizing.
  • There’s a reason for that ~ If you head to a restaurant in France and ask for “Rat Yummy” they’re not going to have a clue what you mean.  And Fatman is willing to bet that if a tourist shows up and asks around for where they can get “drunken rice,”  nobody is going to know what on earth they’re after.  Yes, “makgeolli” may be a bit hard for your average foreigner to figure out how to say by looking at the word in a guide book.  But they’ll still get a heck of a lot further with a badly pronounced “mack-goaly” than they will with “drunken rice.”  Koreans have been calling it 막걸리 for quite some time now, and Fatman doesn’t think the local population is expected to make this switch, so what’s the point?  It does no good to teach foreigners to use a word Koreans don’t know, use, or understand.

This is obviously something that has not been thought out through all the way.  The problem is that Korea can’t afford to keep making these kinds of flubs as it tries to market itself internationally.  There needs to be a real, serious consideration of what people mean when they talk about globalizing Korean food.  Right now, the phrase gets tossed around and used for bigwigs to fund ridiculous projects that make it look like they’re doing something grand when they’re not.  But in the end, nobody has reallyconcientiously worked through what Koreans actually hope to gain from globalizing their cuisine, and what this means in concrete terms.  Until the government and associated agencies really put some thought into this, we’re going to continue to see silly, empty gestures like this.