9 - Spatial Process and Cultural Territory of Islamic Food Restaurants in Itaewon, Seoul

Summary

INTRODUCTION: NEW CULTURAL TERRITORY IN SEOUL

Considering its population size of 10 million, Seoul has a relatively low level of cultural and ethnic diversity not only in numerical terms (Choe 2003, p. 24) but also in terms of dominant ideas of ethnic unity, influenced at least in part by the historical experience of colonialism. However, a new trend appeared at the end of the 1980s, becoming much clearer in the 2000s: the advent of what has been called “diaspora foreigners’ space” (Kim 2005, p. 25) or “ethnic villages” (Kim and Kang 2007) in several areas of Seoul. In some of these places, a legacy of foreign coercive occupation still affects their spatial formation. Nevertheless, a more remarkable phenomenon is the emergence of new cultural players. These new cultural players, often new ethnic groups, are widening a kind of liminal space installed by previous occupants. They transform these spaces into their own cultural territory.

In this chapter, I discuss the advent of an “Islamic area” in Itaewon where the number of Islamic restaurants and halal grocery stores is growing. Islamic restaurants and Islamic food shops presuppose the presence of Muslim consumers who observe the food restrictions of Islamic religion. The process of their expansion, and the perceptions of Koreans and foreign Muslims on the food and spaces of Islamic food consumption such as these restaurants will be observed and analysed. Based on this analysis, I demonstrate how the consumption and interpretations of “Islamic food” in Korea unfolds in non-uniform ways. For the Muslim consumers, these shops offer not only tastes from their homeland but also the possibility of keeping their religious identity. For Korean consumers and other non- Muslim clients, Islamic restaurants and grocery stores represent a form of “exotic dining experience”. This “special experience” is, for them, labelled according to the food's regional and national identification, but usually without consideration of the religious signification of the food. In this respect, this chapter speaks to both the literature on diasporic and transnational food consumption (Cwiertika 2002; Collins 2008; Gabbacia 1998) and the ways in which food consumption constitutes an engagement with emergent “others” within society (Hage 1997; Hooks 1992).