안녕! It’s Ari, your talkative Korean friend and weekend reminder 🎉 Today’s newsletter is a Pepero Day special edition that covers from how to make the popular chocolate snack at home to why baseball fans buy Pepero to support their favorite team. Let’s start!
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Make Pepero At Home
So it’s that time of the year when Koreans give a chocolate snack to their loved ones. November 11th is Pepero Day which is named after a famous Korean chocolate snack brand. It started as the brand’s marketing campaign many years ago, and now it’s commemorated as Valentine’s Day in November. But Pepero Day is not just about romance. Koreans give the stick-shaped chocolate snack or just anything sweet to friends, family members, or work colleagues as well as their lovers. When you don’t have Pepero in your country, you can easily make it at home for yourself with the above recipe video! Some prefer making it rather than buying the snack so there are many Pepero recipes on YouTube It could make a great a Christmas gift for your loved ones.
More on Pepero Day
I talked about my Pepero Day memory in a past newsletter. If you read it, you’ll learn about what the day is like especially for teenagers.
People often think that the number of Peperos one receives represents how much popular the person is. Some Koreans clearly got anxious before the national popularity test because an online test which predicts how many chocolate snack you might get went viral days before Pepero Day. Before you try it for yourself, I have to warn you it’s a silly and not-trustworthy test 🫠 All you do is to type your name in the blank and submit, then the test result shows you how many Peperos or anything else you’ll get each from men and women. My result is 8 candies from men and 4 yeots, Korean traditional candy, from women. Not bad 🙃 Btw, the test is in Korean and you need a Kakao or Twitter account to see the results.
Why Korean Baseball Fans Buy Pepero
The Korean Series, the final championship series of the Korean Baseball Organization league, is ongoing right now. Two final teams, Kiwoom Heroes and SSG Landers, are competing against each other. As of Tuesday, SSG Landers is closer to get the Korean Series title with a 3:2 win. (Update. SSG Landers won ☝) As I explained about Korean baseball teams and its fan culture before, all 10 teams in the league are owned by Korean conglomerates. For example of the two final teams, Kiwoom is a brokerage firm and bank, and SSG is a retail corporation which owns Starbucks Korea and many others. Because of this, Korean baseball fans are supporting their favorite teams in an unique way: buying things from a company that owns their favorite team and encouraging others to do.
Recently, a tweet from a desperate Lotte Giants fan went viral,
It says, “Guys, listen up. Don’t make Pepero at home for the upcoming Pepero Day. Poki? which is another chocolate snack that is similar with Pepero That’s a fake. The real Pepero is Lotte Pepero. now you know Pepero is owned by Lotte, a conglomerate Everyone must eat Lotte Pepero. Please fall for the evil marketing scheme of a conglomerate. We need a new catcher so please buy Lotte Pepero.” So this Lotte Giants fan is encouraging people to buy Lotte Pepero so that the conglomerate can make enough money to buy the team a new catcher 😂 This viral tweet was competitively quote-retweeted by other baseball fans. One Samsung Lions fan said,
“Guys, listen up. When do you think Apple Pay will be available in this country? yes, Apple Pay is not available in SK yet but it’s reportedly coming very soon iPhone? It’s a fake. Why don’t you buy a Galaxy phone with which you don’t need to carry your wallet right from this moment? Galaxy phones have Samsung Pay which is available in SK I beg you. We need new players, too!” Then a Kia Tigers fan chimed in,
“Guys, listen up. Don’t buy foreign cars. Benz? That’s a fake. The real car is Kia. Everyone must drive Kia… We need to keep Park Dong-won who is the best catcher in the team. Please drive Kia.” And lastly a Doosan Bears fan joined,
“Hmm… please buy a fork crane….” Doosan is a heavy equipment maker 😂
📢 Learn Korean With Ari is under construction. I’m preparing a new kind of Korean lesson that is more interactive and hopefully fun. I’ll try my best to start from next week or the week after next! Plz look forward to it :D And I take a break from podcasting for a while to prepare the lesson 🙏
One last thing for today’s newsletter is an interesting reality dating? show idea for K-Pop fans. It’s inspired by EXchange, a mega-hit reality dating show of contestants deciding whether to reunite with their ex or to start a new relationship. One K-Pop idol suggested a K-Pop fan version of the show in which fans choose between her/his former bias and current/new bias 😱 This idea went viral and members of Seventeen, ASTRO, and VIVIZ talked about it in a show 👇 They got excited saying, “It’s gonna be so much fun!” What do you think?
Thanks for reading! I also want to give my special thanks to subscribers who left cheering comments and sent me a heart-warming email last week 🙏 It means the world to me ❤
If you liked my newsletter, like, share, or leave a tip 👇 to support my work. It’ll help me a lot to keep writing 😘 See you next week, 안녕!
감사합니다!