Thailand wants to sell its food culture to the world as a source of soft power. But a campaign that promotes dishes while neglecting the farmers, workers, and regions behind them risks turning living cultural traditions into marketing assets.
Walk into almost any shopping mall in Bangkok and you will find the soft influence of Isaan.
You can eat Som Tam on the ground floor, buy handwoven silk upstairs, and listen to music influenced by Morlam playing over the sound system. On any given weekend across the country, there is a good chance a government agency, tourism authority, and cultural organization will be promoting local food, festivals, or community products from the Northeast. It is a remarkable turnaround for a region long dismissed as poor, provincial, and unsophisticated,
But a closer look within the Isaan region reveals a different picture. Across much of the Northeast, villages continue to lose young people to Bangkok, industrial estates, and overseas labor markets. The dynamic and celebrated culture is losing much of its youth and vitality to migration. Grandparents raise grandchildren while parents work hundreds or thousands of kilometers away. Some communities are growing older even as the culture they produced becomes more popular than ever.
Why haven’t the people living in Isaan benefited from the spread of Isaan culture across Thailand and internationally?
As the government places increasing emphasis on soft power, policymakers hope that food, music, film, fashion, festivals, and other cultural assets can generate economic growth while raising Thailand’s international profile. The strategy draws inspiration from countries such as South Korea and Japan, which have successfully turned culture into a global industry.
Isaan appears to be a perfect example for soft power opportunities. Few regional cultures have become more influential. Som tam, larb, sticky rice, grilled chicken, and jaew sauces are no longer regarded as regional specialties; they are staples of the national diet. Mor Lam has moved far beyond village fairs and temple festivals, while Isaan textiles and handicrafts are promoted as symbols of Thai creativity and craftsmanship.
Soft Power & Isaan Emigration
Much of what Thailand now celebrates as soft power emerged not from government planning but from migration. Somtam did not spread across Bangkok because of a ministry’s international soft power cultural campaign, but because millions of people from the Northeast moved to the capital and brought their food with them. The same is true of many aspects of Isaan culture: migrant workers carried recipes, music, language, and traditions wherever they went. Long before policymakers began talking about creative industries and cultural exports, ordinary people from the Northeast were introducing their way of life to the rest of the country.
Migration, both domestically and abroad, involving millions of people from the Northeast, brought recipes, music and other traditions wherever they went. This unplanned form of soft power helped make Isaan culture visible in Bangkok and other parts of Thailand.
For generations, millions of people have left the Northeast because economic opportunities elsewhere appeared more attractive than those available at home. That pattern continues today. Across the region, parents work in Bangkok, factories on the Eastern Seaboard, or overseas in countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Israel. Remittances support families and communities, but many villages continuously lose working-age residents. This reality of emigration from the Northeast for work needs greater attention in the country’s soft power strategies, if the project is supposed to help strengthen the Northeast.
Soft power diplomacy objectives for Thailand are clearly aided by food that has become mainstream, music that is celebrated, and culture that is promoted as part of Thailand’s identity. It should be communities responsible for creating that culture that benefit from its spread across Thailand, and internationally. Yet, Isaan still struggles with lower incomes, aging populations, and the steady departure of younger generations.
This is not to suggest that nothing has improved. Living standards in the Northeast have risen dramatically over the past several decades. Roads are better, education is more accessible and infrastructure has expanded. But the region still lags behind Bangkok economically, and migration remains one of the defining features of life in many provinces.
The reality of Isaan emigration should receive far more attention in the discussions about soft power. Why not use marketing for a dish, and other Thai soft power promotional activities, for improving the lives of the farmers who grow its ingredients? It should be possible to celebrate a region’s traditions without continuing to depend on depopulation of its young people in search of work elsewhere.
Supporters of Thailand’s soft-power strategy argue that economic benefits will eventually spread throughout the country, and perhaps they will. But critics have questioned whether branding and promotion alone can address deeper structural inequalities.
The issue is not whether Isaan culture deserves recognition; it clearly does. The more difficult question is whether recognition is enough.
A visitor to Bangkok could easily conclude that Isaan is thriving: the food is everywhere, the music is increasingly visible, and cultural products from the Northeast have become part of what Thailand presents to the world.
Yet many of the forces that helped spread those traditions in the first place remain unchanged: people continue to leave, villages continue to age, and families continue to be separated by economic necessity.
Thailand’s soft-power advocates are right about one thing: culture has value. The popularity of Isaan food, music, and traditions proves that beyond any doubt.
The question that’s hard to digest: what happens when some of a country’s most celebrated cultural products come from regions that continue to lose population, talent, and opportunity?
