NEW YORK — At the "KOOM Week 2026" pop-up store in Manhattan's Flatiron District on the 16th, American influencers and New York residents packed the venue despite the rain and lined up at Nongshim's (004370) Shin Ramyun experience booth. Visitors marveled as they picked their own noodles and soup bases to assemble custom cup ramen inside Shin Ramyun containers. Across the aisle, at the booth of Galaxy Corporation, an entertainment startup that brands itself as an "entertech" company, another group of visitors was busy filming robots performing synchronized dances to K-pop on their phones. Jung Tae-woo, a former actor who heads the ready-made meal company Daddy Food, cooked nuggets on site and kept offering samples to the stream of visitors. On the second floor, at the booth of the Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation (aT), Americans could not take their eyes off the large pears and grapes grown by Korean farming companies. Yoon Mi-jung, head of aT's Americas regional headquarters, said the agency will begin supplying Korean grapes to Costco in the United States from the 26th of this month and will also increase pear shipments, adding that Korean grapes will be supplied to Trader Joe's soon after.
KOOM Week began in 2019 in San Francisco as a small networking event for Korean-American founders and has been based in New York since last year. In its early days it was little more than a gathering of Koreans, but it has since grown into a cultural event that combines K-pop and K-food and brings together investors, consumers, brands and creators. This year, organizers moved the venue from Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan to draw more attention. Running an indoor exhibition hall and an outdoor food truck zone from the 14th through the 18th, the event gathered established brands such as Naver Webtoon, Nongshim and Memebox alongside some 30 emerging brands preparing to enter the U.S. market in beauty, food and beverage, fashion, household goods and content.
Korean founders also turned out in force from early morning for the main program, held separately at Terminal 5, an exhibition venue in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen. Young entrepreneurs listened intently to a series of talks by Korean predecessors who have established themselves in the United States. Yoo Hyun-joon, a professor in the Department of Architecture at Hongik University who spoke at the event and met reporters on site, said New York is more favorable than Seoul for starting a business thanks to its developed financial sector. "Unlike other countries, our ancestors never expanded their territory beyond the Korean Peninsula, so until the 1990s we could not even imagine raising money overseas or drawing creative talent from around the world into Korea. That mindset has to change now," he said. Yoo added: "In the past we built MP3 players and Cyworld first but failed to expand aggressively the way iTunes and Facebook did. The MZ generation (Koreans born roughly from the 1980s to the early 2000s) never even considers staying inside Korea, even if all they are making is a lip balm or a hand cream. They are the first generation thinking about leaving the peninsula, so we have to keep encouraging them in that direction."
When lunchtime came, attendees formed a long line in front of a temporary stall set up inside the main venue by Okdongsik. They were waiting to try its pork gomtang, a soup that has been at the forefront of introducing upscale Korean cuisine to New York. Simon Kim, chief executive of Gracious Hospitality Management, who moved to the United States at 13 and became a successful restaurateur with the Korean steakhouse COTE in New York, told reporters that when he first started his business, Korean food was less recognized than Chinese and Japanese cuisine and even less than Vietnamese and Thai food, and that Korean ingredients were hard to find in the United States. "Over the past decade, Korean chefs have delivered so much that the golden age of K-food has arrived now," he said. Ryan Kim, chief executive of Kim's Market, an e-commerce startup that distributes and sells eco-friendly Asian foods and Korean produce, said much of K-food's image in the United States still carries the feel of street food such as fried chicken and ramen. "Policy support is needed so that the popularity of K-food also translates into higher sales of actual Korean ingredients," he said.
That evening, a K-pop concert featuring mostly emerging artists was held at the main venue. During the performances, non-Korean attendees accounted for more than 80% of the audience, underscoring the Korean culture boom in New York. Sander Hur, a partner at the private equity firm Charlesbank and co-chair of the Korean Finance Society (KFS), said there were very few Korean-American finance professionals in New York when he began his career 30 years ago, but the community has grown enormously and now forms strong bonds. "Venture investors, founders and financiers all come together now and help one another," he said. Jung Se-joo, co-founder of the global healthcare company Noom and chair of United Korean Founders (UKF), who organized KOOM Week, said the "PayPal Mafia" in Silicon Valley is a structure in which successful entrepreneurs start new businesses with investors and startup people they already know, steadily raising their success rate. "Koreans have been left out of that, and we need to create the same virtuous cycle through events like KOOM Week," he said.
