SDLC 112 - Cultural Post #2
For my second artifact, I will be discussing a more recent trend that perfectly reveals how the Korean localization of “Dubai Chocolate” turned into a massive global trend. A food item known as “Dubai Chewy Cookie” or “두바이 쫀득 쿠키” or “두쫀쿠” for short pronounced “Dujjonku” has taken social media by a storm. It is a uniquely Korean hybrid dessert that is composed of cocoa powder coated, toasted marshmallow, with a rich crunchy pistachio filling known as kaidaf. The texture is almost stretchy with a slight crunch from the fillings.
To first understand this trend, we can go back to 2021 where Dubai Chocolate had consumers in a chokehold. Dubai chocolate for context, was a chocolate bar filled with knafeh. In late 2023, a TikTok video of a food influencer breaking this bar in half went viral with over a 100 million views. As this trend hit South Korea, locals adapted this dessert and incorporated a chewy aspect using marshmallows, which at the time was trending in Korean desserts. This was the beginning of the birth of “Dujjonku”. To my understanding, a lot of factors contributed to this massive popularization of the dessert. One of which was how the media portrayed the dessert. In modern Korean dining culture, how food appears on social media is almost as important as how it tastes. The visual of pulling the dark marshmallow to reveal a vibrant green, stringy filling, looked extremely captivating. Soon enough, this trend had reached millions of people where even major k pop stars such as Wonyoung from IVE, posted about her obsession with the cookie. In a culture such as Korea where idol validation is heavily looked up to, this transformed a novelty dessert into a must have cultural status. Due to the massive surge in popularity and demand, this created a scarcity and the cookies became difficult to source. This caused one small piece of cookie costing upwards of $7 USD. Many bakeries would even sell out well before noon with hundreds of customers waiting in line before opening.
As funny as this trend is, it reveals a pattern in Korea’s hyper-competitive consumer culture. In a high pressure, fast paced society, where traditional milestones like a secure job are difficult to achieve, winning the war for a limited edition cookie offers a highly visible, instantly gratifying micro-victory, that provides crucial social currency among peers.
For my second artifact, I will be discussing a more recent trend that perfectly reveals how the Korean localization of “Dubai Chocolate” turned into a massive global trend. A food item known as “Dubai Chewy Cookie” or “두바이 쫀득 쿠키” or “두쫀쿠” for short pronounced “Dujjonku” has taken social media by a storm. It is a uniquely Korean hybrid dessert that is composed of cocoa powder coated, toasted marshmallow, with a rich crunchy pistachio filling known as kaidaf. The texture is almost stretchy with a slight crunch from the fillings.
To first understand this trend, we can go back to 2021 where Dubai Chocolate had consumers in a chokehold. Dubai chocolate for context, was a chocolate bar filled with knafeh. In late 2023, a TikTok video of a food influencer breaking this bar in half went viral with over a 100 million views. As this trend hit South Korea, locals adapted this dessert and incorporated a chewy aspect using marshmallows, which at the time was trending in Korean desserts. This was the beginning of the birth of “Dujjonku”. To my understanding, a lot of factors contributed to this massive popularization of the dessert. One of which was how the media portrayed the dessert. In modern Korean dining culture, how food appears on social media is almost as important as how it tastes. The visual of pulling the dark marshmallow to reveal a vibrant green, stringy filling, looked extremely captivating. Soon enough, this trend had reached millions of people where even major k pop stars such as Wonyoung from IVE, posted about her obsession with the cookie. In a culture such as Korea where idol validation is heavily looked up to, this transformed a novelty dessert into a must have cultural status. Due to the massive surge in popularity and demand, this created a scarcity and the cookies became difficult to source. This caused one small piece of cookie costing upwards of $7 USD. Many bakeries would even sell out well before noon with hundreds of customers waiting in line before opening.
As funny as this trend is, it reveals a pattern in Korea’s hyper-competitive consumer culture. In a high pressure, fast paced society, where traditional milestones like a secure job are difficult to achieve, winning the war for a limited edition cookie offers a highly visible, instantly gratifying micro-victory, that provides crucial social currency among peers.
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