#118. 마크정식 -- A best way to a man's heart is through his stomach (feat. GOT7)

Special thanks to Jess from Paris, who suggested that I do a food-related post!

Pardon the cliché beginning; my family was quite poor when I was growing up. There was never enough money to get anything beyond the absolutely necessary. Forget the designer-brand clothing (even when I was a child, the Koreans were sensitive to designer brands, which make you appear wealthy, or so they believe!) and the adorable stationary (a must-have for every schoolchild in Korea); I was a happy child if I could share a small 컵떡볶이 on my way home with a friend, which was a rare occasion.

If I remember correctly, this 떡볶이 (rice cake in spicy chili sauce) in a small paper cup (컵) used to cost around 200 won, or 20 cents. Back then, that was a lot of money to me!

On the other end of the spectrum, if you wanted a very fancy Korean meal, you would be looking for a "한정식" restaurant. The letter "한" comes from "Korean" (remember that "Korea" is "한국", and "Korean language" is "한글", etc.) and the word "정식" means "a meal with decorum." In the Western world, this often means a full-course meal; in Korea, it often refers to a meal with many, many side dishes all laid out in a single table (Koreans often talk about a meal that will "break the legs of the table," or "상다리가 부러지게 차렸다.")

한정식 itself has an interesting history; while the meals derive from the palatial cuisine of Korea, the modern 한정식 restaurants are influenced by the Japanese occupation era -- prior to that, the traditional palatial meals meant that everyone got their own table. Nowadays, a single table is laid out for everyone in your party.

These meals can be quite pricey; the restaurants that specialize in the food of the kings charge upwards of $250 USD for a single meal (but despair not, there are some restaurants that sell more affordable 한정식 meals as well).

Certainly, most middle-class Koreans will never experience a real 한정식. For many Koreans, splurging a little on their meal is already a luxury. For example, one might decide to cook some ramyun noodle for dinner, crack an egg inside it (a real luxury!), and even buy a couple of 김밥 (rice and vegetables rolled in seaweed, almost like sushi) to go with it. Then one might ironically call this meal a "라면정식" (a ramyun meal with decorum).

I mean, this is pretty fancy, as far as a ramyun meal goes!

Here's another way to splurge on your meal. On a regular day, you might decide that a cup of instant noodles is a quick and cheap meal. If you want to add a little bit of decorum to this meal, try what the Koreans call 마크정식 (Mark's meal with decorum):

The ingredients:

Instant cup spaghetti, instant cup 떡볶이, a sausage (microwaveable), and some shredded cheese. Cheese and sausage are optional, and you can replace the spaghetti by any reasonable instant cup noodle.

Normally, just one of these cup noodles, or even just the single sausage, could be a quick and light meal. But remember that you're splurging (and adding some decorum to your meal), so you buy a lot of food that you would normally eat over a couple of meals -- remember that 한정식 has a ton of dishes. What's just a few of these cup noodles, right? The total cost of this meal is about 7000 Korean won, or $7 USD. 

And the recipe (with translation) follows:

Boil some water in a coffee pot, or a kettle. If you have water dispenser, don't worry about this step. While the water boils, microwave the sausage for about 15-30 seconds.

Pour boiling water into the instant 떡볶이 and the instant spaghetti -- put about 0.5-1cm less water in the 떡볶이 than what the recipe asks for. Allow the spaghetti to cook by closing the lid with the sausage, and microwave the 떡볶이 for 3 minutes (2 minutes into microwaving, stir the contents).

After three minutes, take out the 떡볶이 from the microwave, and put in the powdered sauce into the drained spaghetti noodles.

Now stir the contents of the two bowls together.

At this point, maybe it should be added that the instant spaghetti noodles in Korea tend to have a sweet taste, while the 떡볶이 is spicy. And if you have ever tried the Korean fried chicken, you know that the sweet and spicy combination is pretty fantastic!

Then chop the sausage on top of the spaghetti and 떡볶이, and sprinkle the shredded cheese on top.

The trend in Korean food for the past decade or so has been to 1. exploit the sweet-and-salty (단맛과 짠맛, "단짠" for short in Korean slang!) combination, and 2. add cheese where possible. And most of the time, it works! You can see that this combination of food uses both points of the food philosophy, and honestly, you can't go wrong with combinations such as this.

Now microwave the bowl for about thirty seconds, so that the cheese will melt.

Tada! It is finished. Now go and enjoy!

This clever way of combining low-cost food items to create something quite delicious actually went viral on the Korean internet a few years ago (as far as I can tell, it was around 2016). A part of the reason for this recipe going viral is certainly due to the fact that the final product tastes fantastic. However, there is a cute story behind the creation of this "fancy" meal.

The creator of this meal (who opted to stay anonymous) is said to be a longtime fan of the K-Pop boy group GOT7, and in particular, a huge fan of Mark ("마크" in Korean), a member of GOT7. Coincidentally, GOT7 just released a new song, so take a moment to listen:

Anyway, the beginning of this group was not particularly noteworthy, and they had a bit of trouble attracting the public attention. In particular, when you Googled "마크," the search results related to Mark would be overshadowed by those for Minecraft (마인크래프트, or 마크 for short in Korean slang!) It is said that the creator of this recipe was upset by the fact that Mark was not very well-known, and she came up with this recipe as a way to advertise Mark's name.

This is Mark of GOT7.

This is why this meal is called "마크정식," or "Mark's meal with decorum," even though the meal itself has nothing to do with Mark. And the creator achieved all of her goals, and more. As the recipe went viral, many Koreans learned about the existence of Mark of GOT7, and Mark was actually asked to be on a couple of Korean TV entertainment shows, where the cast of the show cooked 마크정식 together with Mark and ate them. Mark himself has also posted pictures of himself eating the 마크정식 on his social media account! (Unfortunately, when I Google "마크," I still get the Minecraft results first... here's hoping that one day, Mark catches up to Minecraft!)

Furthermore, the creation of this recipe is considered to have shown a great way to be a good fan. This fan used her talents (cooking) to do something creative and productive that helped her group of choice, and even got acknowledged by her favourite idol himself. In the K-Pop culture, creative ways of supporting your group is encouraged, and the example of 마크정식 is one of the best examples of it that I can think of.