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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
On September 30, 2011, an outfit named GumshoePictures uploaded on YouTube a video entitled “The True Origins of Pizza,” which, in the format of a brief documentary (3:44), reminiscent of those seen on such stations as the Discovery Channel, investigates an apparent historical puzzle: a series of speakers, from academics to a blogger and a representative of the “Korean Culinary Center,” are interviewed and advance evidence that pizza originated in Korea and had been “stolen” by Marco Polo, much as he had reputedly brought back noodles from China to Italy as spaghetti. Before we engage in an analysis of this remarkable well-produced clip, let us first encourage readers of The Asia-Pacific Journal who have yet to see this video to watch it, unencumbered by any spoilers or the authors' own opinions. At this point, viewers conveniently have a choice of watching mirrored versions: one in English, without the distraction of text crossing the screen in front of them; a version with Korean subtitles, uploaded on October 4, also by GumshoePictures; and a version with Japanese subtitles, uploaded on October 12 by “CoreanCulture.” We embed all of them below, for reception of the clip has differed according to context, and readers may wish to examine the comments on each separately: as of October 28, the first had 451,000 views and a roughly 1,400 to 200 like to dislike ratio; the second had slightly fewer views (356,000), but a strikingly different 1050 to 1,150 like to dislike ratio; while the third had 63,000 views, and an 800 to 200 like to dislike ratio:
1 See here and here for more on the company.
2 See this link. The original title of this article was in fact, ‘Christmas Tree Originated From Korea.“
3 See here and here). See also this link.
4 For a sample of an online piece on the putative Korean origins of Sun Yat-sen, see this link. Matthias Schwartz offers an excellent portrait of trolling culture in “The Trolls Among Us,” from the New York Times Magazine, August 3, 2008, availablehere.
5 For more on the dispute, see e.g. here, here, and here, as well as Sean Fern (2005), “Tokdo or Takeshima? The International Law of Territorial Acquisition in the Japan-Korea Island Dispute,” Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 1: 78-89; Kantoro Serita (2007), “The Takeshima Dispute: A Radical Proposal,” Japan Echo, Vol. 34, No. 1: 32-46; Hong Nack Kim (2009) “The US and the Territorial Dispute on Dokdo/Takeshima between Japan and Korea, 1945-1954,” International Journal of Korean Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2: 92-127; and Stephen Epstein (2010), “Distant Land, Neighbouring Land: Japan in Contemporary South Korean Discourse” in Complicated Currents: Media Flows, Soft Power and East Asia, ed. by Daniel Black, Stephen Epstein and Alison Tokita, Melbourne: Monash University ePress, pp. 1.1-1.15. For the official Japanese position, see Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, ‘Outline of Takeshima issue’ (link), while the Korean government's official position may be found on the Korea Culture and Information Service website.
6 ‘Do You Know? ‘9 July 2008 New York Times.
7 See this link.
8 For more on this quirky figure, see this link.
9 See, e.g., Barbara Demick, “Breaking the Occupation Spell: Some Koreans See Putdown in Letter Change in Name,” Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2003.
10 Park Dae-sung, or Minerva, was held in detention for three month for spreading false rumors by the nervous Lee Myung Bak government in a notorious case of internet censorship until he was finally acquitted. For more, see Eric Fish, “Is Internet Censorship Compatible with Democracy? Legal Restrictions of Online Speech in South Korea,” Asia Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law, Volume 10, Number 2, 2009, pp. 43-96(54) and Mattathias Schwartz, “The Troubles of Korea's Influential Economic Pundit,” October 19, 2009, link.
11 Matt VanVolkenburg of the Gusts of Popular Feeling blog draws an astute connection here with the way Korean archaeologists have occasionally put “square pegs into round holes” in order to reconstruct nationalist pasts (link), as detailed in Hyung Il Pai's Constructing “Korean” Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State Formation Theories. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard East Asian Monographs, 2000.
12 The appearance of a spokeswoman from the “Korean Culinary Center” calls to mind the increasing attention to the role of food in expressions of soft power in East Asia. See James Farrer, (2010). “Eating the West and Beating the Rest: Culinary Occidentalism and Urban Soft Power in Asia's Global Food Cities” in Globalization, Food and Social Identities in the Asia Pacific Region, ed. James Farrer. Tokyo: Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture, available from.
13 Cf. Alexis Dudden, (2008). Troubled Apologies among Japan, Korea and the United States. New York: Colombia University Press.
14 Link.
15 Link.
16 We thank Frank Hoffmann for the image and references to some of the other pieces of artwork that seem to be drawn upon humorously here (link) and elsewhere in the video.
17 Link.
18 As user Hamel, in a fine bit of internet sleuthing, pointed out on The Marmot's Hole thread, when the screen of the blog is shown on the video, the URL bar is shown with the address http://www.addictmediafilms.com. Although the website does not currently exist, and according to Hamel's Whois Lookup search has never been registered, he did discover a company named Addict Media Films whose online resume lists one of its producers and assistant directors. The firm has an impressive list whose clients include Samsung, Hyundai Card, McDonalds, Daum TV, and SK Telecom. The firm's headquarters is located in Seoul, and the producer and assistant director's name clearly suggests Korean origins or descent, albeit with degrees in film and television production from California. It remains unclear whether they initially pitched the idea to Mr. Pizza or vice-versa, but there is little question that the producers of the ad are both tremendously knowledgeable about the context and think outside of the box of blind nationalism.
19 We acknowledge here our gratitude to Andray Abrahamian, who first drew our attention to the clip. It is worth remarking that one co-author perhaps played a minor role as a vector in the (admittedly inevitable) viral transmission by sending it on to contacts in the Korean blogosphere who posted it on their blogs, at which point hit counts for the video began to rise rapidly.
20 Chae Man-shik's Jisuk (“My Idiot Uncle”), for example, engages in a similar form of understated irony, but the object of his satire is Koreans who slavishly followed Japanese customs during the colonial period. More recently, some of the best local ironists (e.g., early Bong Joon-ho films like “Memories of Murder” and “Barking Dogs Don't Bite”) use this mode in a dark way, where the humor comes from the blackness of the comedy, rather than the subtle nod and a wink that the Mr. Pizza ad relies on for much of its length.
21 Links 1 and 2.
22 The user appears to have assumed that the map depicting Korea as having extended into China comes not from John Titor's imagined future, but a bound volume of four historical records, almost universally viewed as spurious, the Hwandan Gogi, that spoke of Korea's extension in ancient times into the Chinese heartland.
23 Nikoniko douga, while similar to YouTube, has a unique function allowing viewers to post comments at relevant points of the video clip. The site thus acts at least as much as social network as a video-sharing site.
24 For 2-channeru's anti-Korean discourse, see Rumi Sakamoto and Matt Allen, “Hating ‘The Korean Wave' Comic Books: A Sign of New Nationalism in Japan?” (link); Rumi Sakamoto, “‘Koreans, Go Home! ‘Internet Nationalism in Contemporary Japan as a Digitally Mediated Subculture” (link).
25 One could quibble over additional minor points, such as rendering “the closer you get” as “the more one looks,” but these issues arise in virtually every translation.
26 International naming of this body of water has been a contentious issue between the two countries; the Korean government insists on “East Sea,” while the Japanese government maintains that the English name “Sea of Japan” is correct. See here and here for each respective state's official position.
27 This particular posting is in English, but the ironical-racist stance expressed exemplifies a typical 2-channeru subject position.
28 The above is in no way meant to suggest that the site commentary is homogeneous. One finds, for example, comments defending Japanese written in a mixture of English and Korean, criticizing ‘stupid Asians’ for not getting the joke, or blaming “white men” for “stealing everything.”
29 Kenkankryū (“Hating the Korea Wave”), a best-selling anti-Korean manga that popularized online hate-Korea discourse, devotes an entire episode to “Korean theft of Japanese culture,” ranging from martial arts to contemporary popular culture.
30 Link.
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