Winners of the Talk Talk Korea 2016 contest have been experiencing Korea with all five of their senses. By trying out for the competition back in their home country, they volunteered to share their views on Korea with the whole world.
The winners from each category are from four different countries. They came together at the K-Style Hub, a tourism information center in downtown Seoul with a virtual reality (VR) concert hall and tons of information about Korean food, pop music and TV shows, on Oct. 19, the first stop on their Korean itinerary.
They enjoyed the VR ski jump and shouted out with excitement many times in the promotional hall for the upcoming PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games. They then had the chance to listen to a few explanations about medical tourism, Korean food and kimchi, and kept asking questions about Korea that they’ve always wondered about.
In the Korean Food Hall, they learned how to cook bulgogi marinated and grilled beef slices from President Lee Jongim of the Korea Food & Culture Research Center and actually cooked the delicious beef dish themselves.
While learning the recipe, they took photos and jotted down notes. After that, they had fun preparing the ingredients, such as carrots, mushrooms, green onions and the marinade, all while carefully preparing their dish.
After learning about the importance of home cooking, which brings out the real flavors of Korean cuisine “straight from mother’s hands,” as they say, Tikhonova Anastasia from Moldova said that Moldovans, Russians and other Eastern Europeans also use a similar expression to describe the deliciousness of home cooking.
The competition this year saw a total of 24,029 entries from 151 countries across the six categories, including photos, Hanbok and online comic books.
Prizes this year went to Tikhonova Anastasia from Moldova in the video category, Pham Thi Minh Thu from Vietnam in the online comic books category, Carlos Alberto Delfin Macias from Mexico in the photo category and to Melissa Salazar Navarro from Peru in the postcard category.
They were all able to visit Korea upon invitation from the Korean Culture and Information Service (KOCIS).
By Jeon Han, Yoon Sojung
Photos: Jeon Han
Korea.net Staff Writers
hanjeon@korea.kr