Shadow and Light Poetry

Confessions of a Food Imperialist

In the late 80s, I was teaching English at a Korean university during the height of the Democracy demonstrations. Some of my students were very anti-American with radical left-wing ideologies. And they had all sorts of conspiracy theories. One of my favorite of their conspiracy theories was the claim that the U.S. was trying to force Koreans to eat American fast food because we were food imperialists. Over lunch at Burger King, when challenged by one of my left-wing students, Mr. Lee, as to why we were always eating at the Burger King, I confessed I was a food imperialist.

Note: True story. I told this story to a visiting Burger King executive when I was working in the Embassy a few years later. He laughed so hard and offered me a job as the country manager of Burger King Korea. I turned him down.