if you can t eat this, then you re not korean! kind of thing. anthony: where were you born? marc: i was born in new york. anthony: you were born in new york? marc: yes. anthony: and were there til marc: til roughly twenty-one. i grew up on the streets, grew up in new york city. it was automatically, you re a chink. wait a minute chink is, isn t that supposed to be chinese? i m korean. and that s where the whole number one korean comes from. hey, i m korean and i m proud to be korean. anthony: marc is what s called gyopo. meaning korean who s lived abroad. as things get better and brighter over here, more and more people are, like marc, moving back home for the ever more numerous opportunities. marc: when i came here, it just felt right for me. i was like, i m here! these are my people! it s like, this is what i ve been missing! but i was considered not really korean, i guess, you know? i was considered an outsider in my own country. i had, like, this t
nari: the biggest difference between korean fried chicken and american anthony: chicken tonight? i feel so clean. i ve never felt so man: where is my ticket? [ laughter ] anthony: next i ll be performing a medley from flavor town [ laughter ] anthony: don t play this game with yeah, who is everybody here? man: mr. noh. anthony: oh yeah baby, that s good. man: yeah baby. anthony: come to me. come to me. anthony: powerful in a sort of small, girly way. anthony: is this drinks that goes with food, or is this food that goes with a triumphant return to korea. [ laughter ] nari: woof! anthony: oh yeah. it should surprise no one that i m in a happy place right now. maybe the best way to tell this story is to start at the end. like a dog returning to its own vomit, i keep flashing back to was it last night? the night before? i smell fried chicken on my clothes, so perhaps. hello nari.
[ laughter ] anthony: i would ve fired your ass. marc: no, don t say anything about wayne newton. he s the man. anthony: hip-hop, like early 90s west coast. marc: well, i m an east coast guy. anthony: i know! i m not entirely convinced that korean food s healthy. marc: have you always been like, like a food guy? anthony: i think in some ways i ve appropriated the han. i m very happy here. marc: last one? anthony: yeah. is this drinks that goes with food, or is this food that goes with drinks? marc: the culture here is you have to have something that goes well with that drink. anthony: we should probably be drinking that, right? marc: yes! have you tried soju before? anthony: oh yeah. how often can you come to a place like this, acceptably, per week? i mean, you come every day?
anthony: nice. best part s skin. is this so hard? walk in and eat delicious food and get hammered in the street? being korean is pretty awesome! marc: last one? anthony: yeah. anthony: nighttime in seoul. and everywhere you go, it seems, food and drink. this is what they call a pojangmacha. i guess it s kind of like a pub, if pubs could operate in the street. you could have drinks. and, well, i guess you could call it, pub food. marc: dj shine. we re about to go eat something really, really good. welcome to seoul! let s do this. anthony: my new friend marc helped popularize western style hip-hop in korea. an event that led directly to me
nari: ready? anthony: are you complaining about your hours, nari? nari: holler. anthony: number one selling liquor in the whole world. you have to kick the prostitute so many times. nari: that doesn t count. anthony: get in my mouth and stay there. [ laughter ] nari: she s already dead. anthony: come on. i m getting this, like, weird sense of déjà vu. like, haven t we been in a fish market in seoul at some point in some previous life? [ laughter ] nari: walk down memory lane. what should we toast to this time? anthony: to a triumphant return to korea. second time around for me. nari: cheers to that. gunbae. anthony: gunbae. there s something i m increasingly crazy about. that i ve been craving since i got off the plane. banchan. the spicy, pickley, delicious snackies that accompany your meal in korea. anthony: ah, i miss this. this is, for me, one of the most exciting things about korean food, actually, is the banchan, yeah.