Why Do Koreans Give SPAM as a Chuseok Gift?

By Sunam Park

Walk into a Korean supermarket in the weeks before Chuseok and you may encounter a sight that requires some explanation.

Cans of SPAM—six, nine or twelve at a time—sit in immaculate rows inside glossy presentation boxes. Some are paired with cooking oil, tuna or seasonings. The boxes come with handles and decorative sleeves, ready to be carried to a parent’s home, delivered to a business associate or placed in the hands of a grateful employee.

To an American visitor, this may look like an emergency food supply dressed for a wedding.

In the United States, SPAM is usually regarded as an inexpensive, convenient canned meat. Its name also became synonymous with unwanted email after a famous Monty Python sketch repeated the word until it overwhelmed every other item on the menu.

In South Korea, however, SPAM can become a respectable holiday present.

Every year during Chuseok—Korea’s autumn harvest holiday, sometimes imperfectly described as “Korean Thanksgiving”—millions of cans are packed into gift boxes and exchanged among families, neighbors and colleagues.

Why would one of America’s most ordinary foods be wrapped in gold and presented as a gesture of appreciation?

The answer is not simply that Koreans love canned meat. Inside a Korean SPAM gift box are traces of war and hunger, American power, industrialization, middle-class aspiration and a surprisingly sophisticated compromise between prestige and practicality.

The can contains meat. The box contains modern Korean history.

One Can, Two Completely Different Meanings

Hormel Foods introduced SPAM luncheon meat in Minnesota in 1937. Because it was shelf-stable, compact and easy to transport, it became closely associated with the Second World War. According to the brand’s official history, more than 100 million pounds of SPAM were shipped abroad to feed Allied troops during the war.

But war gave the same product two very different social identities.

In the continental United States, SPAM gradually acquired a reputation as an inexpensive wartime ration and working-class food. In places shaped by the presence of the U.S. military, including Korea and Hawaii, it could signify something else entirely: access to scarce American goods.

A 2025 academic study by Yonsei University researcher Yoo Jung Lee traces this reversal across the Pacific. Her article, “The Militarization of SPAM and the SPAM of Militarization”, argues that SPAM occupied opposite positions in local class hierarchies while remaining inseparable from war and American military power.

In the United States, it was becoming cheap and ordinary. In post-liberation Korea, it circulated through military posts, street markets and smuggling networks as a scarce luxury available primarily to American soldiers, Korean intermediaries and urban consumers with cash.

The familiar account says SPAM arrived in Korea during the Korean War, which began in 1950. Lee’s research adds an important correction: a black market for American military goods had already developed in Seoul by 1946, during the U.S. military government. The Korean War then greatly expanded the circulation and cultural visibility of those goods.

What made SPAM desirable was not merely the meat inside the can. It was the difficulty of obtaining it.

A can of American meat represented calories, modern packaging and proximity to a powerful foreign country at a time when much of the Korean population was struggling to secure basic food.

Scarcity created status.

From Military Leftovers to Korean Comfort Food

The history of SPAM in Korea is often linked to budae-jjigae, literally “military base stew.”

In the years of extreme food shortage surrounding the Korean War, sausages, canned meat and baked beans associated with American military bases were combined with Korean ingredients such as kimchi, garlic, red pepper paste and instant noodles.

The result was not simply an American dish transplanted into Korea. It was foreign military food reorganized according to Korean taste and the structure of a Korean meal.

SPAM would undergo a similar transformation.

CJ CheilJedang formed a technical partnership with Hormel in 1986 and began producing SPAM domestically in 1987. The product was no longer an elusive item passing through military channels. It could now be manufactured, distributed and marketed as part of everyday Korean life.

The decisive act of cultural translation came at the dining table.

In 2002, CJ CheilJedang popularized an advertising line that can be translated as, “A slice of SPAM on warm rice.” Rather than presenting the meat inside a sandwich or beside eggs, the campaign placed it on a bowl of steaming white rice.

SPAM had acquired a Korean address.

It became something that could be fried for breakfast, placed in a lunchbox, added to kimchi stew or served when a child needed encouragement to finish another bowl of rice.

By the first half of 2024, cumulative sales since the start of Korean production had surpassed 2.07 billion units, according to company figures reported by The Asia Business Daily.

Yet popularity as a side dish does not fully explain how SPAM became a holiday gift. For that, it is necessary to look at what Koreans gave one another before canned ham arrived.

When Six Kilograms of Sugar Was a Luxury Gift

Holiday gifts function as records of what a society considers scarce, useful and desirable.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, popular Korean holiday gifts included sugar, flour and seasonings. These may appear mundane today, but in a country recovering from colonial rule and war, ingredients that could improve a family’s daily meals carried considerable value.

When Shinsegae Department Store issued a Chuseok gift catalogue in 1965, it offered 96 products. A six-kilogram bag of sugar was considered one of its premium gifts.

There is something wonderfully direct about that period: sweetness itself was a luxury.

As Korea’s economy grew during the 1970s, gifts began moving beyond basic necessities. Cosmetics, dress shirts, snack assortments and instant coffee became fashionable. By the mid-to-late 1980s, canned tuna and canned ham had joined the holiday market.

A 2023 study by researchers Yeji Kim and Lana Chung examined Korean newspaper coverage of holiday food gifts from 1930 through 2022 using text-mining methods. Their research found that changes in food gifts were closely connected to wider shifts in Korean society, consumer perception and spending patterns.

In that sense, Korea’s holiday gift history is a miniature economic museum.

Sugar recalls postwar scarcity. Instant coffee reflects the arrival of mass consumer culture. Canned ham represents industrialization, modern food manufacturing and the expanding aspirations of the middle class. Today’s premium beef, health supplements and mobile gift certificates reveal a society increasingly concerned with health, personal taste and convenience.

SPAM did not appear out of nowhere as an eccentric Korean custom. It inherited the role once played by sugar and cooking oil: a packaged food capable of making someone’s household feel a little more abundant.

The Box Offers Prestige. The Cans Offer Practicality.

SPAM has survived decades of changing taste because it solves one of the central problems of gift-giving.

The giver wants the present to look generous. The receiver wants something that will actually be used.

A Korean SPAM gift set satisfies both sides.

Its carefully arranged cans and polished packaging give it the visual formality expected of a holiday present. Inside, the product is familiar, portionable, easy to prepare and capable of sitting in a cupboard until it is needed.

The box offers prestige. The cans offer practicality.

Consumer research helps explain why this combination works. In a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Ernest Baskin and his colleagues found that gift givers tend to place more emphasis on desirability—how attractive or impressive a gift appears—while receivers place relatively greater value on feasibility and ease of use.

The study did not examine SPAM or Korean holidays specifically. Its findings nevertheless offer a useful lens through which to understand the product’s endurance. A SPAM gift box manages to appear presentable without becoming impractical.

The economic evidence points in the same direction.

In 2024, the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry surveyed 1,000 adults about their intended Chuseok gift purchases. Across every age group, the most frequently selected buying criterion was value for money, chosen by 68.2 percent of respondents.

More than half—55.4 percent—planned to spend no more than 50,000 won on each gift.

Fruit ranked as the most preferred category at 43.8 percent, followed by health supplements at 32.4 percent and meat at 30.5 percent. Processed-food gift sets, including products such as canned ham and tuna, ranked fourth at 22.2 percent.

Processed food is no longer the undisputed king of the Korean holiday gift table. But more than one in five respondents still selected it, demonstrating that the category remains far from obsolete. The full results are available in the chamber’s Chuseok gift-purchasing report.

CJ CheilJedang reported that 58 percent of its Korean SPAM sales in 2024 occurred around Chuseok and Seollal, the Lunar New Year. This is company-supplied rather than independently audited data, but it illustrates just how tightly the brand’s sales cycle is tied to Korea’s two major family holidays.

A Gift Is Never Just an Object

Practicality alone, however, does not explain why people continue to exchange neatly wrapped boxes when they could simply send money.

A gift is an object carrying a relationship.

In a 2024 essay published in Korea Journal, Yonsei University sociologist Dong No Kim describes gift exchange as a form of social value creation. A gift can reinforce trust, solidarity, recognition and the expectation of reciprocity. Its importance cannot be measured only by its retail price.

That insight is particularly relevant to Korean holiday culture.

A Chuseok gift says: I remembered you. I appreciate what you have done. I would like our relationship to continue.

Yet a gift must also negotiate social risk. Something excessively expensive may embarrass the receiver or create an uncomfortable obligation. Something too cheap may appear careless. Alcohol, cosmetics and fashion items depend heavily on personal taste. Cash can feel overly direct outside close family relationships.

A SPAM gift set occupies a relatively safe middle ground.

It is not as expensive as premium Korean beef, but it appears more formal than a bag of groceries. It is recognizable, easy to share and available at several price levels. Even recipients who would not buy it regularly may store it and eventually eat it.

SPAM did not endure because it is the most luxurious gift Koreans can imagine.

It endured because it is unusually difficult to get wrong.

From the PX Black Market to Pokémon

For Chuseok 2026, the transformation continues.

CJ CheilJedang announced that it would offer a company-wide range of 260 holiday gift sets, its largest selection to date. Its SPAM products include collaborations with Kakao and Pokémon, using character designs, stickers and collectible items to attract younger consumers.

A food once associated with military supply lines is now being sold with a Pokémon keychain.

The contrast is almost too perfect.

In postwar Korea, the value of SPAM came from scarcity. During industrialization, it represented abundance and modern production. On the contemporary holiday market, it is asked to deliver affordability, convenience, nostalgia and entertainment at the same time.

The packaging changes because the meaning of prosperity changes.

So Why Do Koreans Give SPAM for Chuseok?

Hormel’s American product page lists the ingredients of classic SPAM as pork with ham, salt, water, potato starch, sugar and sodium nitrite.

A Korean Chuseok gift box contains one more ingredient that does not appear on the label.

History.

It carries memories of American military power and postwar hunger. It recalls a generation for whom meat and white rice signified a better life. It belongs to the era when workers travelled home for the holidays with both hands full of gifts. Today, it reflects consumers who still wish to appear generous but increasingly insist that a present should be useful and reasonably priced.

Koreans do not give SPAM for Chuseok simply because canned ham is considered a luxury.

They give it because, for decades, this small and durable object has compressed Korea’s changing idea of abundance into a form that can be carried home.

Open the can and you will find luncheon meat.

Open the box carefully, and you will find 80 years of Korea.

Sources and Further Reading

• Yoo Jung Lee, “The Militarization of SPAM and the SPAM of Militarization: Postwar Culture and SPAM as War Material in the 1940s–50s”, World History and Culture, No. 77, 2025.

• Yeji Kim and Lana Chung, “Text Mining Analysis of Holiday Food Gifts According to Periodic Changes”, Journal of Foodservice Management, Vol. 26, No. 4, 2023.

• Dong No Kim, “The Politics of Gift-Giving and Diplomatic Gifts in Traditional Korea”, Korea Journal, Vol. 64, No. 2, 2024.

• Ernest Baskin et al., “Why Feasibility Matters More to Gift Receivers than to Givers”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 41, No. 1, 2014.

• Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 2024 Chuseok Gift Purchasing Survey.

• Hormel Foods, Official History of the SPAM Brand.

• CJ CheilJedang, 2026 Chuseok Gift Set Announcement, September 1, 2026.