Rediscovering Hansik in the everyday, and making something special of it
Illegal is a restaurant that fuses overseas barbecue trends with Korea's own realities. CEO Park Jung-hwan, drawing on his experience running Misu Sikdang — a Hansik-and-drinks spot — before going on to launch Illegal, shared his perspective on how the food people eat every day can be reworked. What we broadly call food culture develops by asking, again and again, who is eating, how, and why — and so the conversation went to the things we usually pass over in the everyday that could be uncovered and turned into something more special.
The group also spent time looking back at early 20th-century Seoul: what people were eating, and how those original forms and trends have carried into the early 2000s. Grounded in period materials and their analysis, opinions came in from every direction on which parts of Korean food history, when borrowed and reworked, might carry us into a bigger market.
A community wider than the restaurant industry
It isn't only people working in restaurants who ask where Hansik is heading and what its future might hold. Specialists from every field that touches food and eating brought their own views to the table, all considering together what face Hansik could carry to the world. Jin Nae-gyeong, the planner behind the well-known Naegoong Tour, and Lim Soo-a, who runs Shua Letter and Shua Table, joined in — turning the discussion to how restaurant-industry trend information can be delivered in ways that resonate more sharply with people across different professions.
Manager Kim Min-song of MGRV — which researches the future of co-living — also weighed in, noting that the relationships among people sharing a set living environment can grow deeper and wider with food as the medium. In the end, cooking and food culture cannot be pulled apart from the fabric of our daily lives — that was the note of shared understanding and solidarity the day left on.
