EXCLUSIVE: Starring Korean-American chef Edward Lee as well as veteran actor Ryu Soo-young, Ed And Ryu: Mad About Seafood is a culinary travel documentary co-produced by BBC Studios Asia and Studio JanChi — with a K-pop star also set to make an appearance in the show.
London-based executive producer Jeong Sunyoung sits down with Deadline to share more about collaborating with Lee and Ryu to bring viewers on a gastronomic voyage around South Korea‘s coastline. Jeong talks about bridging different unscripted storytelling styles between the U.K. and Korea, casting Lee and Ryu in the show, and how co-producing with overseas partners like BBC Studios can potentially help to solve a major pain point in Korea’s unscripted television business.
Previously under the working title “12 Seas,” Ed And Ryu: Mad About Seafood is a four-part English-language series exploring South Korea’s rich seafood traditions and maritime heritage. Following Lee and Ryu as they harvest wild seaweed using ancient techniques and catch anchovies with traditional bamboo traps, the show is also about contemporary Korea: diving into the science behind K-beauty trends like salmon sperm injections and reimagining the local cuisine with seasonal seafood.
The show will premiere next year on BBC Earth and BBC Player across Asia.
Brewing a culinary adventure
Jeong is no stranger to exec producing a series about Korean food, after shepherding BBC Studios’ first original production in Asia, Deep Dive Korea: Song Ji-hyo’s Haenyeo Adventure, from concept development to its premiere in May this year. Starring Song Ji-hyo, the series followed the female free divers called “haenyeo” on Korea’s Jeju Island, who use their skills to harvest a variety of seafood.
The concept for Mad About Seafood first emerged from a pitch competition co-hosted by the Korean Creative Content Agency and BBC Studios. Studio Janchi, which focuses on food-related programs, beat more than 20 other pitches to win the competition.
The initial idea revolved around showcasing Korean seafood based on the seasonality of every month — with 12 episodes to reflect 12 months — but the final version pivoted to four episodes focusing on spring, summer, fall and winter.
The shoot for the series first began in March, with the final shoot set to take place in end-October.
Casting Edward Lee and Ryu Soo-young
A familiar face on cooking competition programs like Iron Chef America, MasterChef, and Culinary Class Wars, Lee was quickly cast in Mad About Seafood.
Jeong says that Mad About Seafood is far from just a whistle-stop tour of Korea’s culinary highlights, but instead, an in-depth program about culture and heritage that also provided space for Lee to share more about his identity as a Korean-American.
“I think what really made the audience root for him [in other shows] was his effort, in his early 50s, to reconnect with the heritage he felt he had slightly neglected because of many reasons,” says Jeong. “There was a scene where we asked him this question, and he said that he felt slightly guilty about not using his Korean name, but in the United States, as an Asian immigrant, you have pressure to assimilate with America as much as possible. Now he feels very free to enjoy his Korean heritage, so we tried to capture this moment in a very honest way.”
Ryu has starred in food shows like Stars’ Top Recipe at Fun-Staurant, Mr. Eo’s Food World Tour and K Food Show, besides acting in films and dramas like Steel Rain 2, Bloodhounds and Endless Love.
“Ryu Soo-young is a great, and although they hadn’t met before we put them together, they know of each other,” adds Jeong. “Koreans jokingly say that every household needs a Ryu Soo-young because he’s too perfect. He’s handsome. He’s very kind. He cooks.”
Differences in storytelling styles between Korea and the UK
Reflecting on some of the differences between unscripted programs in Korea and the UK, Jeong said that Korean programs tend to have quite a lot of dialogue. “For international audiences, without having any language understanding or cultural background, it’s very difficult for them to engage with these kinds of programs, which actually works really well for Korean audiences.”
Besides collaborating with Studio JanChi and local crew in Korea, Jeong worked with BBC Studios’ global team, across the London, New York and Singapore offices to bring Mad About Seafood to life.
She says that with the BBC taking care of the international distribution, one of the biggest pain points in the Korean unscripted business is resolved for this show.
“We help to sell and distribute this program internationally. For Korean content, when it comes to drama, it’s very successful, but when it comes to unscripted — although domestic reality shows and some game shows have been quite successful in terms of launching a format — for factual entertainment or documentary, they are always looking for ways to get more exposure and international distribution. For BBC Studios, which is a world-leading distributor, this is very helpful,” says Jeong.
For Jeong, Mad About Seafood has also been the culmination of different threads in her life which have armed her with strong intercultural sensibilities and a sharp sense of how to produce for the international entertainment ecoysystem: her six-year career as a multimedia journalist alongside her decade-long journey as a TV producer; her upbringing and early professional life in Korea paired with her current career and home base in the UK.
“Because I’m Korean, I think it is a bit easier for me to push for a more challenging angle, because I’m an insider with outside knowledge, when it comes to storytelling for Korean audiences or with Korean production companies. I like to challenge them, because I really want to make sure that we are pushing the envelope when it comes to creativity.”
For example, while researching material before making Deep Dive Korea, Jeong felt that the topic of the haenyeo female free divers had been glorified in the media without sufficient context of the suffering and hardship historically associated with the community. “I asked, ‘why do they still not carry air tanks when this technology is available for them?’ I really wanted to push the show to go deeper into the subject matter.
“We were able to tell the story of old haenyeos who grww to love their jobs, but it was actually started by economic necessity. There are people, especially from the younger generation, who love being haenyeos because they love the idea of working in the ocean and there’s much more awareness around ecology and the environment these days. But for older people, it was probably a luxury for them,” adds Jeong.
In another example, Jeong shares that at the start, her Korean production partners were nervous about telling the story of hagfish in the show. A delicacy in Korea (and especially popular in Busan), the animal is linked to a dark period in the country’s history.
“I wanted to talk about the history behind this food, because during the Japanese occupation, Japan built a factory around manufacturing goods from hagfish like hagfish bags and all. But Koreans at the time were very poor, so they found a way to eat hagfish meat out of the hagfish factory. I found this kind of story very interesting, because it’s very layered and it’s a great story to tell about how Korea was and how Korea is now,” says Jeong.
“But there was a little bit of hesitation from my production partner, because understandably, they want to show the best parts of Korea and don’t necessarily want to go back to these difficult times for Koreans, but I told them that people will resonate much more with the story because it’s a universal topic, in terms of going through hardships or difficult times. Now that we’ve actually overcomes this, this is great way of talking about Korea’s transformation through the lens of food. So I told my production partner my intentions behind what seemed to be slightly difficult story for them, and I think they understood and were, in the end, quite happy that we actually covered that subject.”
Memorable scenes and a changing Korea
Jeong says that another particularly memorable location in the upcoming series was a mud flat that they shot in the spring this year. Mudflats and tidal flats in Korea are home to a wide variety of clams, crabs, octopuses, and snails, which can be harvested.
“I actually didn’t know how important mud flats were when it comes to ecology,” says Jeong. “If you look at a mudflat, it looks lifeless and gray, but there’s actually so much life going on. It was a perfect spring story. Despite the depressing visuals on the surface, if you go deeper, there are so many clams and life there. Apparently, Korea has one of the largest mud flats in the world.”
With production wrapping up at the end of this month for the series, Jeong shares one of her biggest takeaways from traveling around the country.
“We really want to make sure that this is a story about dynamic, contemporary Korea. For instance, when we filmed the haenyeo in Jeju, I noticed when we filmed in rural areas in Korea, there are quite a number of foreign workers. The Korean demographic is changing.
“In the haenyeo sequence, we have a Filipino haenyeo who is loved by her colleagues. Her nickname is ‘Octopus Granny’ because she’s really good at catching octopus and that was very interesting for me, because haenyeo is a community that is known for being quite closed, but the fact that they embraced a foreign woman, who settled in Jeju Island because she married a local man, was an exciting way to show how Korea is changing.”
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