The Indonesian Embassy has cohosted the Kriuk Cooking Competition to give South Koreans and local Indonesians a chance to demonstrate their skills with noodles.

The competition is an example of how cooking can unite the minds and hearts of both Indonesians and South Koreans, the Indonesian Embassy’s Charge d’Affaires Zelda Wulan Kartika said.

The participants used instant noodles, a popular food among students in Indonesia and Korea, as the main ingredient.

ASEAN Culture House Director General Park Mi-sook, said that Indonesian cuisine was very popular in Korea because it features rice and noodles used in Korean dishes and adds various spices to tingle the taste buds.

“ASEAN Culture House is proud in facilitating the competition,” she added.

The competition was co-hosted on Nov. 20 by the ASEAN Culture House in Busan and the Indonesian Embassy. 

The Indonesian Embassy in Seoul held another event for gastronomy diplomacy this year -- “Gastro Diplomacy: From Jakarta to Seoul,” which featured famous cooks William Wongso from Indonesia and Jia Choi from Korea.

According to ministry of tourism and creative economy in Indonesia, food is the largest contributor of the creative economy sub-sector to Indonesia’s gross domestic product in 2020, amounting to 445.44 trillion rupiah ($3 billion), or approximately 41 percent of Indonesia’s creative economy GDP.

The ministry stated that culinary subsector opened jobs to 9.5 million workers.