In order for Korean food to be globalized, it is necessary to analyze the perception and emotional
response of foreigners to Korean food and to comprehend Korean food from the perspective of foreigners.
However, it is not easy to survey among overseas consumers scattered around the world. This study aims
to understand Twitter users’ perception and emotional response toward ‘Korean Food’ by using the social
big data text mining techniques including the sentiment analysis, word cloud, and social network analysis.
The text data were collected from foreigners in the world tweeting on ‘Korean Food’ from August 17 to
27, 2016. As results, twitter users had mostly positive opinion on ‘Korean Food’ in the sentiment analysis.
The verbs expressing desire or positive feeling for ‘Korean Food’ such as 'want', 'crave', 'like', and 'love'
were most identified in the word cloud. ‘Spicy’ term were frequently showed in the word cloud and social
network analysis. Twitter users perceive that ‘Korean Food’ is spicy food. In order to globalize Korean food, it is necessary to find ways to reduce perception of Korean food is spicy. Also, if Korean food is
localized to adapt the taste of foreigners, the possibility of globalization of Korean food will increase.