Guerra entre cafés

Desde el año 2000 aproximadamente, Starbucks ha sido en Corea la cadena número 1 en cafés, pero comenzó una fuerte competencia en el año 2010 y su puesto comenzó a desvanecerse, la competencia es principalmente de 2 cadenas grandes de cafés de nacionalidad coreana “Caffe Bene y Angel in  Us” las cuales comenzaron una campaña de expansión con la que superaron por número de tiendas a Starbucks.

Actualmente la cadena de Cafés Caffe Bene que cuenta con más de 500 tiendas en Corea ha dado de que hablar por su expansión, por un lado se ha convertido en un modelo de expansión para las franquicias y por el otro hay quienes lo describen como una sobre representación insostenible. 

El CEO de “Caffe Bene” Mr. Sun-Kwon Kim asegura que la filosofía de su empresa es lo que la ha llevado al éxito “Caffe Bene. La filosofía de que “el café no es solamente una bebida ordinaria, sino una cultura, con esto en mente y el  concepto de diseño europeo en el interior de la tienda combinado con un poco de estilo coreano, es la principal razón de nuestro éxito”.

Para poder prevalecer en el negocio de café en Corea, diferentes marcas han comenzado a ver negocios más allá de este país. Por ejemplo “Angel in  Us” ha comenzado su expansión en diferentes países asiáticos, y ahora tiene 8 tiendas en China y 2 en Vietnam, dos países con costumbre de consumir té.  

SECON 2014

SECON 2014

This week I attended the Security fair in Seoul South Korea, from March 12~14. Here you can find the latest technology for the security business. I notice a difference between the last year security fair because last year’s fair more companies attended and there was more variety. 
This year’s security fair was dominated by the CCTV products (The acronym CCTV stands for Closed Circuit Television). And also could find many cameras and vigilance surveillance with different characteristics like better resolutions, night vision, face recognition, long distance recognition, and so on. The competition among cameras is fierce. 

Other security products during the fair: anti shop lifting, GPS, alarm monitoring, PC and document security, access control, digital prints recognition; door, keys, lockers, motor control and card readers systems. However I found that not all the companies are not Korean but American or European branches although the majorities are Korean companies. 
If you are in the security business you should attend the fair check out their web page where you can find the exhibitors list, places to stay, directions and so on. 
http://www.seconexpo.com/

About my new TOPIK video

Korea Traveler (@korea_traveler) tweeted at 10:25 PM on Sat, Jun 29, 2013: Did you see the new video about Korean language (TOPIK)? This is the question 39 I hope you like it ^^ http://t.co/1i2BKlr8ZT (https://twitter.com/korea_traveler/status/350968189632512001) Get the official Twitter app at https://twitter.com/download

Korean cooking Dak jjim. Korean braised chili chicken

Today Im at sempio cooking academy learning how to cook dak jjim is one of korean people favorites and my own too.  Dak- Jjim is a Korean braised chicken or spicy checken stew known also by the name Dakdoitang.

Ingredients:

• 1 Chiken (precut into pieces)
• 500 ml water
• 2 Garlics 1 thumb nail size piece of ginger
• Chinese onion (white part)
• 1 tbspWhite wine (optional)
• 1 potatoe
• 1 carrot
• 1 onion
• salt

Seasoning:

• 3 tbsp Gochujang (chili bean paste)
• Chopped garlic 2 tbsp
• chopped ginger 1 tbsp
• Gochucaro (ground red peper) 2 tbsp
• white wine 2 tbsp
• Hyangshin Gangjang (braising) 2 tbsp

Method:

• Put chicken, water, garlic, ginger, chinese onion, and 1tbsp ot white wine into a pot and bring it to a boil.
• Once it starts to hard-boil then get rid of any unnecessary impurities and add 3 tbsp of Hyangshin GanJang.
• Mix all seasoning ingredients and add it to the pot.
• Cut begetables into bitable size. Add into the pot. Cook until the chichen gets fork tender.
• Finish with sliced chinese onion (the green part)

Korean cooking Dak jjim. Korean braised chili chicken

Today Im at sempio cooking academy learning how to cook dak jjim is one of korean people favorites and my own too.  Comming soon the recipe.

TOPIK No. 28 Questions 1 to 8

Do you know what the TOPIK is?
TOPIK: Test of Proficiency in Korean, is the exam for non native speakers of korean. Many people take the exam every year, people like korean language lerners, international students who wants to study in Korea or jobseekers.
In this blog I'm going to explain about it, and you can see what the real exam is. This is the first part of the TOPIK exam No 28, questions 1 to 8. If you have plans to make the TOPIK or just want to know what is about take a look, I'll try to upload every week and hope you find it useful.

The Koreans by Michael Breen

The Koreans by Michael Breen. If you want to have a deeper understanding of korean society. This book illustrates very well korean society, history, economy and politics. local media, work, family, confucianists, materialists and many more adjectives and descriptions about this culture that I found so true. "The koreans have a way of upsetting you and getting into your heart at the same time"... AGREE!