[News Today] Instant rice consumption on the rise

[LEAD]
Despite the steady decline in overall rice consumption, South Korea's instant rice market is booming. How it's being consumed, we take a look.

[REPORT]
After returning home from work, he is in a hurry to prepare dinner.

Instant cooked rice is set at the table.

When having breakfast and dinner at home, they resort to instant rice. In fact, they don't own a rice cooker.

Kim Woo-jin, Lee Da-sol / Married couple
As working parents, it is not easy for us to cook rice ourselves. So I gave the rice cooker to my mother.

In most cases, they were unable to use up the rice supply.

In Korea, per-person rice consumption fell to the lowest-ever level last year. It is about half the level recorded 30 years ago.

But last year, the amount of rice used for making instant rice increased 25 percent.

The sales of Hetbahn, the nation's first brand of instant, microwaveable cooked rice, reached a record high of 900 billion won or over 647 million U.S. dollars last year.

Park Soon-yeop / Busan resident
When I'm feeling lazy, I microwave the instant rice. It tastes fresh.

Lee Soo-heon / Gunpo resident
I eat instant rice three or four times a week. I think it tastes good.

This trend is leading rice cooker companies to transform.

Cuckoo is expanding its business by producing refrigerators and robot vacuums. Poongnyun, a well-known pressure cooker company, released a humidifier developed with the application of the rice cooker technology.

The rice cooker industry is transforming fast to address the increasing consumption of instant rice.