When Yong Park, a Korean immigrant to Israel, bites into a piece of gefilte fish and announces his verdict in accented Hebrew, more than 600,000 people watch. The reel — one of many from his taste-test series with his Israeli wife Zlata — is part of a viral phenomenon that has turned the couple behind @zlata.park_ into some of the most-shared faces on Israeli social media.
The Love Story#
Zlata and Yong’s relationship began long-distance between Korea and Israel. For years they documented tearful airport goodbyes and months-long separations on Instagram. Yong eventually immigrated to Israel to be with Zlata, they married, and in the summer of 2025 he received his Israeli ID card — a milestone they celebrated publicly with their now nearly 25,000 Instagram followers.
Their joint account bio sums it up neatly: “זלטה הישראלית ויונג הקוריאני — משתפים את המסע שלנו ביחד” (“Zlata the Israeli and Yong the Korean — sharing our journey together”).
“Yong Tastes” (יונגטועם)#
The breakout format is simple: Yong tries an Israeli (or Jewish diaspora) food for the first time, reacts, and rates it. The hashtag #יונגטועם (“Yong Tastes”) now runs across dozens of reels and TikToks covering shawarma, matza during Passover, homemade sushi, fish cakes, nigiri salmon, and — most viral of all — gefilte fish.
“We started making videos just for fun because we enjoyed filming, and then one day Yong filmed himself eating Israeli food and suddenly it blew up,” Zlata told Israeli outlet Mako in an August 2025 interview. “People are really supportive — the whole family, our friends, and even people we don’t know. They’re just crazy about Yong. People recognize him on the street, and in supermarkets they ask to take pictures with him.”
Success has brought imitators. According to Zlata, other creators have begun impersonating Yong and copying his accent — and the couple finds it funny rather than annoying.
Pushing Back on Racist Comments#
Not all the attention has been positive. The couple have spoken openly about racist responses to their intermarriage, with some commenters objecting to the fact that Yong is not Jewish and invoking tired tropes about “assimilation.”
Zlata’s response, in her Mako interview, cut through it: “Yes, we’ve run into nasty comments, racist comments about him not being Jewish and ‘assimilation’ and ‘oy vavoy.’ But people don’t understand that what matters, what counts, is not the religion — it’s the person themselves. And I got lucky.”
Why It Resonates#
Small Asian communities in Israel are often discussed in abstract terms — as labor migrants, as business stories, or as diplomatic subplots. What Zlata and Yong offer is something different and harder to ignore: daily, affectionate, funny video of a mixed Korean-Israeli household navigating food, language, and in-laws. That kind of everyday visibility does more to normalize the presence of Korean (and other Asian) partners in Israeli life than any policy paper or festival.
It’s also, simply, good content. The format is easy to consume, the emotional register is warm, and Yong’s genuine reactions — wary of fish cakes, delighted by shawarma after Passover — hit the universal sweet spot of food-as-encounter. Yong’s personal account @yongikor now carries 19,000 followers in its own right, and their TikTok (@zlata_yong) and YouTube (@zlatayong) reach goes well beyond the combined Instagram footprint.
For a country whose public conversation about Asians often swings between exoticization and invisibility, Zlata and Yong’s feed is a quiet, delicious corrective.
Source: Mako (Hebrew, August 2025).
