SEOUL — Stroll into an expensive department store and walk straight past the $180 watermelon with a ribbon twirled just so around its stem. Don't bother with the tea in a butterfly-shaped tin for $153, or with the gift boxes of Belgian chocolates or French cheeses.
If you're looking for a gift that bespeaks elegance and taste, you might try Spam. The luncheon meat might be the subject of satire back home in the U.S., but in South Korea, it is positively classy. With $136 million in sales, South Korea is the largest market in the world for Spam outside the United States. But here, some consider the pink luncheon meat with its gelatinous shell too nice to buy for themselves, and 40% of the Spam is purchased as gifts.
Especially during the holidays, you can see the blue-and-yellow cans neatly stacked in the aisles of the better stores. South Koreans are nearly as passionate about packaging as the Japanese are, and the Spam often comes wrapped in boxed sets. A set of 12 cans costs $44.
"Spam really is a luxury item," said Han Geun Rae, 43, an impeccably dressed fashion buyer who was loading gift boxes of Spam into a cart at the Shinsegae department store before the recent Chusok holiday.
Chusok is the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving, and the biggest gift-giving occasion of the year here. On this holiday alone, Korean distributor CJ Corp. estimates, 8 million cans of Spam change hands.
Han's intended recipients were her employees, among them a young single man and a married woman with children. "Everybody loves it," Han said. "It is so easy and convenient."
She was expecting to get her own complement of Spam as well -- in previous Chusok seasons, about a third of gifts she received were food sets that contained at least one can of Spam. "My children are in high school and they love it," she said. "I cook it in \o7jjigae \f7stew with kimchi.
"It goes very nicely with red wine," said another shopper, 44-year-old Kim Hwa Yeon, a stockbroker in a crisp navy blue suit and pearls, who said she was buying for clients.
Spam's success in South Korea is one of those cultural mysteries -- a bit like the reverence for Jerry Lewis in France -- where an image is improved in translation. South Koreans take their Spam quite seriously and seem mystified as to why it is a subject of parody among Americans.
"I can't understand what is funny about Spam," said Jeon Pyoung Soo, a CJ Corp. executive who is brand manager here for Spam.
