Who Really 'Worships' the Wang?
Not Suitable for pumpkin people
When I started working on this blog in earnest, I wrote in the ‘About’ page, that ‘you cannot immerse yourself in another culture without it altering how you perceive your own.’ Trying to comprehend facets of another culture is a dialogue between both your experiences and those presented by a new culture in much the same way as history is a ‘dialogue between past and present.’ Of course, I was wrong! A pumpkin lacks perception of its own environment, so to do some of the visitors that come here – often only for the briefest of visits.
Pumpkin people
Although I have had few nasty comments, on other blogs there has been some ‘discussion’ about the nature of Bathhouse Ballads. I doubt any of these ‘pumpkins’ took the time to read its content and drew their swords based solely on snippets gleamed from other bloggers. All it took was for one blogger to highlight my sexuality, and to do that he had to read a considerable amount of text because I have only clearly and unambiguously outed myself on a few occasions, and the peripheral pumpkins started making assumptions. When I accidentally read a couple of pumpkins’ posters, I actually thought they were referring to another blog. They describe this blog about ‘boys dropping their trousers,’ a blog about ‘kiddies,’ and a ‘gay blog’ and it wasn’t until I read the title they were referring to, that I realised it was Bathhouse Ballads. Worse, a forty-five year old friend I mention becomes a ‘boy’ and one reference to ‘skinny teenagers having the biggest dicks,’ labeled me a ‘perv.’ Only a ‘pumpkin’ could read Bathhouse Ballads, sweeping aside the many other topics covered, ignoring so much in the process to enable them to bend what remains to fit the predetermined judgment, to arrive at such erroneous conclusions. Being reminded that societies are populated predominantly by pumpkins, that those pumpkins are often the voice of the majority, and that individuals with the capacity to think for themselves are rare, is never very nice but more enlightened comments were present in my defence.
Clueless
Part of the pumpkin analysis was that Bathhouse Ballads is ‘into’ Korean ‘wang-worship’ and describes Korea men as ‘wang-flashers’. ‘I assume this refers to communal bathing because I have only once mentioned anything that could be construed as ‘flashing.’ It seems that ‘skinship’ and ‘concepts such as ‘dick friends’ (고추친구), a phenomena I haven’t yet written about, and same-sex bathing in general, provokes some hostility. I initially assumed that you cannot immerse yourself in another culture without reasserting your own. Well, a pumpkin can! So, in what way has my understanding of British culture, and specifically male gender, been reconfigured in the light of a Korean experience?
The voice of the majority
It is only westerners, and certainly not all, that perceive ‘skinship’ as ‘closeted homosexuality’ and are correspondingly fearful or suspicious of same-sex bathing, the relaxed Korean attitude to nudity and physical proximity. Of course, there will be ‘gay Koreans who use such a culture for some form of ‘sexual pleasure’ but to most men the penises of other males are of little more significance than are noses. If a Korean boy sees the penis of another male he is not ravaged with guilt or accused by friends of being ‘gay,’ as I have witnessed as a teacher in the UK. I regularly meet and read about westerners who will not go bathhouses and others who while not necessarily hostile to skinship, perceive it as something that must be banished from a classroom. Why? Korean teachers themselves use it and I’ve seen this on many occasions. Isn’t it rather insensitive of waygukin teachers to cast out the cultural norms of their host society and then impose their own? This is Korea, not back water wherever and there should be no need to impose foreign cultural values on Koreans.
Ironically, it is not Korean men who are ‘wang-obsessed,’ but the westerner. Western men, myself included, are burdened with an obsession of the penis, of what is truly ‘wang-obsession.’ When westerners, and especially western pumpkins, berate this aspect of Korean culture, they do so because of the values of their culture, they do so because they have been inculcated with obsessions about the ‘penis’ which derive from a deep-seated ‘fear of ‘sex’ as demonic and chaotic.’ The most glaring manifestation of this ‘obsession’ is when westerners conflate nudity with sex, and male nudity with homosexuality. Koreans find this conflation quite bizarre, as do other cultures. And the moment you accuse Korean men of being ‘wang-worshippers’ you highlight how totally you misunderstand the nature of your very own culture, let alone that of another! If communal bathing is ‘wang-flashing,’ then it is also ‘toe-flashing’ or ‘hip-flashing’ but why the focus on the ‘penis’ unless you yourself give it more importance than it’s worth.
anthropology - not an academic pursuit for pumpkins
We westerners are so obsessed with the penis and its association with the disruptive potential of sex to the extent that men will hide them from each other. Naturally, many males shower together after sports but far more are either embarrassed by it or avoid it. We judge other men on the size of their penis and assume that a bigger penis is a sign of greater masculinity or sexual prowess and while I suspect size has some significance in Korean society, it is tempered by communal bathing where you realise that between most men there is little difference. I imagine only a very small number of Korean boys angst over dick proportions in comparisons to British boys. And if we have a problem with our dicks we would generally find it very embarrassing to confide in a friend and personally, despite close male friends back in the UK, I would find it easier to discuss such things with my Korean friends and indeed have done. Only a penis obsessed westerner could perversify this admission.
Humour is used to defuse the fear and unease caused by both a real penis and anything resembling it and this was the subject of my post, Sausages and Shit – a Comparisons in Smut Humour. Give a class of British boys anything phallic, a banana or sausage, and you can guarantee someone will connect it to with a penis and begin making jokes with it. We even pass e-mail poster jokes about taxing different length penises – a tacit acknowledgment that a big dick means you are better off and hence need penalising.
and some have a university education
And then there’s our historical legacy, often one of the medical control of the penis: the association of mental weakness and instability with masturbation helped give rise to both the Boy Scouts and Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. All were all attempts to divert boys away their penis not because they were necessarily fixated on them, but because western ideology has a long and established fear of sex and anything associated with it. A ream of illnesses, some terminal, were associated with masturbation for which Kellogg himself advocated circumcision without anesthetic, as a cure. Neither did women escape the paranoia with the vagina and uterus often identified as the source of maladies and illness, most notably hysteria which was treated by hysterectomy. The penis, as the visible manifestation of sex and all the depravity to which indulgence could drag you was naturally the greatest offender and capable, especially in youth of perverting an individuals moral character and by extension the morality of the nation. From cod-pieces to Freud and beyond, western culture has a history of inflating the worth of that little appendage. In western history and ideology, the ‘penis’ is far from unimportant, and the fear of its potential continues to obsess us sparking one witch-hunt after another.
The problem is some people are tourists in their own culture
Same sex communal bathing liberates one from all that cultural baggage and to experience mixed sex bathing, as in Japan, takes it a step further. I would go as far as to say that not only does communal nudity provide a sense of liberation from the legacy of history as well as other negative baggage we carry about our bodies, but it is also a political statement. In Britain, if not indeed western society, masculinity and what comprises being male, expressed by traits such as: not showing emotion, heterosexuality, avoiding same-sex physical contact, revulsion at male nudity, aggression, etc, all focus on the penis and its capabilities and the fear that relaxing any constraints may entice engagement or may reveal more about us than we want to know. And with the taboos unnoticed, invisible and perceived as natural, they become a springboard from which pumpkins judge the world around them.
In future I will mark such posts with a logo warning readers that the content is not suitable for pumpkin people.
Not suitable for pumpkin people
© 林東哲 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
Bogland Merit Badges
Best Blogs in Korea
Somewhere in cyber-space voting is taking place for the ‘Best Korean Blog.’ No, I am not including a link! Firstly Bathhouse Ballads is one of the nominees and, secondly, I am tempted to delete all references to it. To be honest, I have not been very happy with the boy scout badges that e-rags provide. Just being required to string a sentence together as a qualification for their banner is a little like buying a degree. Having that icon appear on my site somehow smacks of prostitution and now that I’ve been ‘exposed’ by An Idiots Tale, ironically asking people to vote for me, I’m tempted to remove it.
So, in response to a true guru of Korean blogs and writing in general, Mr Wonderful, who resides at An Idiot’s Tale, I fully admit that I arse licked to get that pretty badge which I could subsequently stick in my sidebar. I feel quite ashamed! Like I’ve been caught by mummy having a wank while wearing her knickers. And as shameful as it is, I’ll admit to those who asked, rhetorically, on An Idiot’s Tale’s pages, what you have to do to qualify for that coveted badge. Simple, I wrote a begging e-mail. No one has to nominate you because you can nominate yourself! And I prostituted myself good, telling them I’d ‘been published’ as opposed to having ‘published myself’ – which was in fact exactly what I was doing at the time. Yes, it felt sleazy but you know what students are like when they want a gold star, it doesn’t really matter to them if they cheated or not, it’s the sticker that counts.
Mr Wonderful at An Idiot's Tale
And why is it a form of prostitution? Because even as I was composing that grovelling letter I was well aware that many of the other ‘nominated’ blogs where shite. Half of them provide the same experience as lifting the lid on an unflushed toilet, one with turds in residence! When people enter and subsequently leave your blog in the same click, you need to reconsider.
In contrast, I visited several blogs last night via An Idiots Tale, all of them regular commentators on his site and ended up having to tear myself away at 2.am. And guess what? All of them had shitty ‘hit statistics.’ Now, I’m quite proud of my paltry hits even though they tally the same amount in one month, as the big bloggers get in a day, but these guys had really poor figures, in some cases under a thousand. And to compound matters, some blogs were much older than mine. But their content and style was far superior to many of the blogs nominated for the ‘Best Blogs in Korea,’ mine included and many of the blogs I have read, or not read, in the last year!
Now, I love my blog and I love writing and being a snob, I profess I am a writer not a blogger. There is a difference! And of course, what qualifies me to self-aggrandizement is that I’ve been paid by other people to write and have had a substantial work published. Most first time authors earn less than £4000 for their efforts and after all the revisions, and late nights, the pay back is pitiful. But the one reward is that you’ve been published, preferably by a third-party and that’s a kick in the teeth to petty critics. But there is an irony; I have had more hits to Bathhouse Ballads in six months than my book sold copies in 10 years. It’s only natural that I love my blog, as a creative pursuit, above my published book. A book is dead! You write it and leave it and as much as you wish you could rewrite parts, you can’t. And as I have learnt to my cost, you can’t easily retract what you’ve said. And unless you’re famous and successful you have little or no interaction with your readers. Blogging is quite different and compared to a book, it can be changed, it grows and can respond (via its readers). Compared to a book, a blog is alive which also means it needs nurturing and can die.
So, seeing my blog swirling around in that cesspit, shoulder to shoulder with a substantial, amount of shite, made me feel pretty dirty. The feelings of prostitution, of being soiled were intensified when I noticed that some of the nominated blogs have more followers than they’ve had hits. How do you account for 940 followers when your site has only been visited 800 times? Even the big bloggers don’t have a such a fan-base despite the fact they can attract over a 1000 hits a day!
I am going to vote for one of the nominated blogs as they’re not all crap! But I don’t particularly want anyone voting for me because winning it would really involve no victory, other than the one erected by An Idiot’s Tale and I’m probably going to zap that merit sticker in my sidebar. My artistic pride tells me to but the prostitute whispers for me to hang on because it’s all about exposure. The only real reward in blogging, apart from the art of writing itself, are the number of individuals who subscribe to your site and read your work on a regular basis and no amount of self-delusion can increase that figure or alter the worth of your writing.
© Nick Elwood 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
It Can Pay to be a Pygmy
Not suitable for Pumpkin people
My Korean girl students love camp boys, other wise known as ‘flower boys.’ Camp is totally in and the poncier and more androgynous a boy or man is, the better – provided of course, he’s straight. If you dressed a frond of ooo-wong (우엉 – burdock) in fashionable clothes, gave it a nice haircut and sent it flouncing down the street all limp and bendy, girls would swoon.
‘Boys over Flowers;’ highly successful!
Jay Park (박재범) – Handsome or Pretty? Or even pretty handsome!
Boys over Flowers (꽃보다 남자) was a highly successful drama which ran in early 2009, was aired in numerous other Asian countries and has subsequently been identified with the migration of Korean culture to other countries, a phenomena known as the ‘Korean Wave’ (할류). The first ‘wave’ (2005-2009), often associated with ‘Winter Sonata,’ consisted exclusively of drama which gradually gained a fan base outside Korea, predominantly in Asia. With the export package now including pop music, theater and musicals, a second wave (dating from 2010), can be identified. As an example, the singer Jay Park created more traffic via Twitter, on March 8th, 2010, than did that day’s Oscar nominations. Coined by some as ‘Hallyu 2.0,’ the ‘2nd ‘wave’ has encompassed Egypt, Turkey, Romania, India and even Uzbekistan. Interest in Korean has increased and a country as small as Nepal now has 30.000 people a year signing up for Korean language proficiency tests.
Burdock, wu-weong (우엉) Limper than a lettuce!
The incredibly popular, ‘Boys over Flowers,’ which has among other things, helped lower the fan-base age associated with the ‘Korean Wave,’ consists of 29 episodes following the intrigues of a group of high school boys. The four central characters, often refereed to as ‘F4,’ have been attributed with consolidating the interest in ‘flower boys’ and encouraging men to take more pride in their appearance. As a result, significantly more Korean men now use cosmetics and the current trend for teenage boy fashion is what Americans might call ‘preppy.’
‘Boys over Flowers‘ (꽃보다 남자) was inspired by the Japanese bi-weekly manga comic, Hana Yori Dango, by Yokio Kamio and ran from 1992-2003. The magazine was targeted at Japanese high school girls. I find the title, ‘Boys over Flowers,‘ a little clumsy and feel ‘Boy’s before Flowers,’ a frequently used alternative, much clearer. The title is a pun on the Japanese saying, ‘dumplings before flowers’, which refers to the habit of being more interested in eating snacks than viewing the cherry blossom during the famous Hanami festivals. It is the snacks and festival foods that are the most alluring; the blossom simply provides an excuse to indulge. And if you’re not eating the snacks, you’re probably watching the passing boys, especially if they are as beautiful as the blossom.
A Japanese hanami party. Beautiful blossom, beautiful boys, delicious food. What’s your priority?
‘Flower boys,’ basically meaning ‘pretty boys,’ is not in the least offensive and Korean youngsters, even boys, are able to differentiate between those who are ‘handsome’ and those who are ‘pretty.’ Neither identifying someone as ‘pretty’ or indeed being labeled ‘pretty,’ implies any accusations of homosexuality or effeminacy.
A boy nominated by his class as a ‘pretty boy.’
‘Pretty boys’ have delicate features, soft skin, and are usually a little gaunt and certainly very androgynous. In terms of western, and certainly British standards, they’d babyishly be deemed ‘gay’ and might even get the shit kicked out of them. Korean ‘flower boys’ can also get a rough ride, not because they’re gay, but because of their pin-up status and ability to capture the hearts of girls and women. One significant mystery-comedy movie, ‘Flower Boys,‘ often called by the crappy title, ‘Attack of the Pin Up Boys’ (2007), centers on the theme of ‘flower boy bashing.’ There’s no pleasing thuggy straight men who will just as quickly bash you for being gay as they will for being heterosexual and a babe magnet. Of course, Attack of the Pin Up Boys is only a story and doesn’t reflect real life. From what I’m led to believe however, the biggest problem ‘flower boys’ face, is in convincing girlfriends they are not ‘playboys’ (바람둥이) because they are often too pretty for their own good.
Leetuk, one of the Super Junior celebrities. A possible candidate for a ‘pretty boy’ nomination.
Unlike many British girls, Korean girls tend to like a boy who is well-mannered, slim and averagely muscled (which given we are talking predominantly about boys, means skinny), has broad shoulders, is fashionable and intelligent. Neither do they have to have a six pack or look manly. Indeed, a few of my female students positively dislike both aggressive boys and muscles. But the most important quality of all, one which constantly supersede all others, is that a boy has to be taller than his girlfriend. Girls can be quite cruel about this requirement and while talking to a class of girls about the celebrity Tae-Yang (태양), I overheard one call him a ‘loser.’ The reason? He is under 180 cm tall. Basically, if you’re a boy and short your fucked!
Taeyang Big Bang member. ‘Handsome’ or ”pretty?’
Though they wouldn’t understand the word even if explained to them, the definition most reflecting the sort of boys Korean girls like, is camp! In the very words of one of my students, ‘we’ like boys who ‘look like girls.’ And though ‘handsome’ boys, that is boys who look like men, are attractive and certainly seem to be preferable in terms of a solid relationship, many girls will swoon in discussions about ‘pretty boys’ even if they prefer the ‘handsome’ type.
Back in Scumland UK, when it comes to boys, many girls have no taste at all often because their priority is a quick rummage in their panties or a passionate-less poking behind the bike sheds and hence prefer boys who are one step up from brute primates and who are valued for being aggressive, butch, sporty, loud mouthed and promiscuous. If British girls demand any prettiness, it is that their lads be, ‘pretty unintelligent.’ Yes, I’m being horribly unfair but in the UK, currently riddled with anti-intellectualism, teenage pregnancy and sexual diseases, for many, any spark of brain is a turn off. The reason why the Korean predilection with ‘flower boys’ is so refreshing is that it is a kick in the mouth to the belief that the alpha male is universally appealing. I would go as far as to suggest that in Korea, even the boys and men who look like men pail into effeminacy when compared to the shaven heads and brute physogs of the men that dominant and epitomize so much of British culture. Meanwhile, if you’re a Korean girl with the stature of a pygmy or dwarf, life’s gonna be one big ride!
© 林東哲 2010 Creative Commons Licence..
Ersatz Kimchi in a State of Emergency
Kimchi-ism
I’m tempted to do some stealing! With an almost total absence of any police on the street I doubt I’d get caught. The only thing that puts me off is that being a waygukin, I stand out. It would only take one Korean to see me humping ‘the goods’ to my one room, for my visa to be relinquished.
Rooftop shopping? Either would fit in a carrier bag
Rooftop shopping? These require a trolley
I haven’t eaten cabbage kimchi in several days and I’ve noticed either a stark absence, or drastic reduction of any in restaurants. Korea without kimchi, unbelievable! You have to live here to understand the cultural and culinary significance caused by a cabbage shortage. You might find it amusing that a lack of cabbage can fuck a nation, especially when you come from a country like Britain where once upon a time, when families practiced that barbaric ritual of eating meals together, children had to be forced to ‘eat their greens.’ While Kimchi is the national food of Korea and has almost iconic status, its deficiency is not the equivalent of Germany without bratwurst, or Britain without fish and chips, it deeply more devastating. I would go for months without a bratty when I lived on Mainland Europe and sauerkraut was something you ate occasionally. Koreans eat kimchi with every meal and in some cases it is a core component of specific meals. To understand the significance of a kimchi-less Korea, you have to envisage Britain without any form of cooking oil, or potatoes, the USA without hamburgers, or perhaps even a nation without petrol or alcohol! Whatever item you choose in an attempt to elicit empathy, it has to be something fundamental enough to strike at the very heart of a country.
Napa Cabbages October 2008
And of course, it isn’t just the Chinese (or Napa) cabbage that’s suffered a devastating season, cucumbers, lettuce and mooli (무), all of which are used in other forms of kimchi or in accompanying barbecues, are also in short supply. Two weeks ago, I bought a rather small cabbage for 5000 Won (£2.50) which is a massive increase on the hearty one I bought in January, costing 1000 Won (50 pence). Yesterday, in E-Mart, there were no cabbages at all and the vegetable section looked somewhat deserted. And all at a time when cabbages should be one of the most prolific items being sold by street vendors.
President, Lee Myung-Bak’s, recent declaration that he will only eat kimchi made from the European type of cabbage (양배추), until the shortage abates, suggests the problem is a national emergency. However, before we join the rebellion or start lynching farmers, it is worth remembering there was a temporary shortage last year and in 2007, when chili and cabbage suffered bad harvests, it cost me a small fortune to make a batch of kimchi.
My January batch of kimchi
Meanwhile, restaurants that rely on kimchi and other forms of lettuce and cabbage have had to reduce their portions and in some cases, rather than raise prices, are compensating customers by providing larger amounts of meat. As a meat guzzling waygukin, I’d much rather have less rabbit food and a larger platter of barbecued pork, especially as kimchi made from European cabbage is totally ersatz.
Cabbages being salted. October-November 2008
I’m out of fresh kimchi and intended making my winter batch this month and while I have kimchi in my ceramic pot, made in January, it is the ‘stagnant’ type best used in cooking. So, do Koreans ever steal each others kimchi ? There are a number of pots on my roof top and indeed pots stand on most rooftops as well as in recesses and corners of buildings. I’m very tempted to pinch a pot, not because I need kimchi but because nicking kimchi is both outrageous and comical. A waygukin stealing a pot of someone’s homemade kimchi during a cabbage shortage smacks of pro-Korean-ism and a love powerful enough of driving you to theft could be construed as a crime of passion.
There might not be any kimchi in the supermarkets, but there's a feast of it on every rooftop.
Related Articles
- Surging Kimchi Prices Bite Restaurants (online.wsj.com)
© Nick Elwood 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
For Pied and Dabbled Things
fascinating - or ''just' (그냥)?
Back in Scumland UK, the greatest disruption to a lesson would be two students having a fight, possibly assaulting the teacher or simply a student calling you a ‘fucking wanker.’ In Korea, a similar level of disruption is achieved if an insect flies into the classroom. No! I’m not referring to a gigantic hornet or a preying mantis; pandemonium can be unleashed by a simple house fly. On such occasions, students will duck their heads and even move to the other-side of a class and until the insect is removed or killed, all teaching is likely to cease. I know students, teenage boys, who will squeal and panic, if a butterfly flutters into the classroom.
I have seen some beautiful butterflies in the mountains, some the size of small birds with brightly coloured wings. As a schoolboy, my fondness for butterflies was inspired through collecting and trading cards that came with a packet of Brooke Bond PG Tips Tea. Although I’ve noticed dragonflies are admired, some kids even hate butterflies, one of the most majestic and harmless of insects. In Korean, it seems many people relegate most bugs to the same category as cockroaches.
Launched by Brooke Bond (tea) in 1963, this series of cards probably inspired my interest in butterflies
Koreans seem to have a general dislike not just of insects, but bugs in general and ‘bug’ is the preferred term as this precludes having to differentiate between insects and arachnids and many other creepy crawly things. Indeed, terms such as ‘insect’ and the characteristics they exhibit do not seem as easily understood as they might be in the west. The problem of nomenclature, despite biological taxonomy, is obviously cultural but I wonder to what extent it reflects a general disregard for nature in general, especially in a society which has so rapidly become highly urbanized.
'Just' (그냥) a spider!
Korean students, and many adults I know, seem not just oblivious to nature, but indifferent and unmoved by it. Of course, I am making a sweeping generalization and fully aware many Koreans are quite the obverse as I often come across Korean nature, and nature photography blogs on the internet, but I nonetheless experience different attitudes from students and friends than I would back home. Several years ago, on a mountain trail in Ch’eonan, I was privileged to see a fox posing in profile. My fellow teachers all insisted that either foxes do not exist in Korea or that I must have seen a cat. You simply cannot confuse a cat with a fox, especially having seen the fox motionless and in profile! Every child will give you the correct name when you describe a magpie, one of the most common birds even in urban areas, but describe a jay, a common sight in the mountains, and most will have no idea of its name (산까치). The impressive sorceress spider (무당 거미), with their expansive webs dusted in a powdery yellow, and abdomens emblazoned with red and yellow markings, to all but one of the people I asked, were ‘just’ (그냥) spiders. Wasps and hornets suffer a similar fate and are often clumped together as bees (벌). And then I’m told figs trees don’t grow in Korea when there are several growing in my vicinity.
The reason I am so keen as to Koreans attitudes about nature is that most dictionaries fail to distinguish species and sub-species and hence I am compelled to make inquiries. I often encounter problems trying to discover the Korean word for particular animals or plants. For example, Koreans have a number of different names for ‘octopus’ (낙지, 문어) and will often insist that they are different from each other but this difference has more to do with ‘octopus’ as a food, rather than ‘octopus’ as a species. In Britain, we have a similar problem with ‘sardines’ and ‘pilchards,‘ both different size herrings and most of us differentiate them by the shape of can they are bought in. Sardines, as juvenile pilchards, come in small flat tins whereas the adult pilchard, comes in a round can. I doubt many Brits are capable of differentiating between sardines and pilchards in any other way than by the type of can they occupy when dead and ready to eat.
This is a pilchard
This is a sardine
Differentiating between rats and mice is also problematic and if you tell a Korean you had a mouse in your house, or even had one as a pet, they will recoil in horror. Despite ‘mice’ having a distinct name (생쥐), they are conflated with rats (쥐) and only by describing a rat as having a long leathery tail, can you be understood. Exactly the same occurs with chipmunks (줄무늬 달암쥐) and squirrels (달암쥐) both of which are described as ‘squirrels.’ (다람쥐) Yes, chipmunks are a form of squirrel but they are quite distinct from squirrel squirrels. Indeed, several online dictionaries I consulted identified both squirrels and chipmunk, as squirrels and despite chipmunks being common in the nearby mountains, most people I asked either did not know what they were or simply identified them as ‘squirrels.’
A rat - big, dirty and loves sewers and shite
This is a mouse - small, cute, lives in fields and is a veggie
On another occasion I was with friends in the Kayasan Mountains and noticed what looked like clumps of mistletoe high in the trees. I was excited because I’d not seen mistletoe in Korea and it was prolific and thick. Mistletoe is a parasitic plant which grows in the uppermost branches of trees, the seeds being deposited via bird droppings. Not only did my friends have no idea what is was, but they weren’t very interested. As we were coming down the mountain, I noticed bags of ‘clippings’ being sold to make tea and was able to confirm it was mistletoe (겨우사리).
mistletoe can be seen growing in clumps in the high branches (Kayasan, Heinsa)
In early summer, I was looking at plants, along with a close friend, being sold by a street vendor. She was quite impressed that I was able to identify tomato, aubergine, thyme, rosemary and courgette seedlings as well as larger jade and citrus plants. She had no idea that tomato plants have a distinct smell that is imparted onto your hands if your touch them. My poor friend could only identify a chili plant and asked the vendor to name the plants to corroborate my claims.
It worries me that so many young Koreans are uninterested and uninspired by nature, if not fearful of it, because the easiest means by which species will disappear, is when there is no regard for them. In dystopian novels such as Huxley’s, Brave New World, Zamyatin’s, We, and to a lesser extent, Orwell’s, 1984, nature is perceived as abhorrent, distasteful, imperfect and dirty and hence requiring banishment beyond the confines of ‘civilization.’ Once there is a general dislike, or simply disregard for nature, or even people, and before you know it, the damage has been done. All political and social atrocities are born out of an attitude of dislike, disinterest or loathing and the same can be said of environmental atrocities.
The impressive Kayasan Hotel
In Kayasan Mountain, behind the impressive Kayasan Park Hotel, next to the nature trail entrance, is a natural history museum in which are housed an extensive collection of insects which are either extinct or endangered. Some of the insects, all dead and mounted, are of gargantuan proportions, some as much as three or four inches long. The gargantuan insects that once lived in the mountains of Korea, with their chunky exoskeletons and long antennae, fascinated not just me but the numerous Korean children, ooo-ing and ah-ing around me; ironically, the same children who yelp, scream and panic when a house fly buzzes into the classroom. It seems that for many, nature only has the power to inspire wonder and awe when it’s dead, mounted, sanitized and safe.
Capable of causing panic!
© Nick Elwood 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
Food to Put Hair on your Chest
Klingon Gourmet – Food to put hair on your chest! Raw stomach and liver!
‘Klingon’ was how I used to describe Korean food in my first six months of living in Korea. I’m sure many of the first Koreans I met, and probably everyone meets on their initiation into Korean culture, enjoyed taking me to places where eating was either a trial or simply difficult. Everything seemed to be either raw, alive, recently butchered, or some part of the animal associated with intestines or anuses. Even the infamous dog stew is almost an English Sunday dinner in comparison to some of the ‘Klingon’ menu. I’ve eaten dog meat twice under the assumption it was another meat and masked by copious soju, was unaware. Not the same can be said for some of the other foods which would chill your spine in all but the most extreme states of intoxication. And if the initiation to Korean cuisine isn’t focused on eating as a test of will power, basically of suppressing revulsion, getting it into your mouth is problematic.
No matter how good a westerner’s chopstick skills are, eating a bowl of noodles without a splash zone encompassing anyone sat at adjacent tables, is difficult. Usually, it’s the final little suck that whips them into the mouth and flips soup broth over yourself and your neighbours. Eating noodles is an art and Koreans only have to purse their lips as if kissing, for the noodles to levitate into their mouths. Only Koreans seem able to eat noodles so effortlessly and without actually sucking and hoovering them. Eating buckwheat noodles, traditionally eaten chilled in a broth, in the summer, is weird. If I didn’t cook naengmyon (냉면) myself, I would assume the noodles were several meters long because as you start to suck them up, more and more are dragged up into your mouth. Naengmyon must be the only food where one end arrives in your stomach as the other end is leaving your bowl.
Barfing up ectoplasm? No, but a great photo which captures the art of eating buckwheat noodles. Once you start you can’t stop!
But there are stranger foods for the ‘gourmet’ and the naive to ‘stumble’ upon: Sea squirt (멍개), the Jekyll and Hyde of Fruit de la mare, has flesh which is beautifully orange and inviting, resembling a juicy peach but the outside looks more like a biological hand grenade genetically modified from a bloated tumour. The detergent taste of its flesh certainly cleanses your palate as does the watery bile from the innards of the closely related, styela clava, midoedoek ((미더덕), which I’d trade for a silkworm cocoon or spoonful of dog-stew, any day. Then there’s ‘dog dick’ (개불 – Urechis unicinctus), which resemble large pink worms and which you’ll enjoy far more if you haven’t witnessed them in their living state. The rubbery bodies are tasteless but coated in sesame oil, they slip down the gullet with ease.
the vegetable-leaf wrap (쌈) typifies much of Korean eating
Raw fish, often killed at your table or within sight, is a mild experience, though I have to put a tissue over the heads of fish when their eyes twitch manically as they are being slowly sliced to death. And raw meat thinly sliced and eaten in a similar style to the fish, that is wrapped in various leaves (쌈) with kimchis, garlic and chili, is fairly tolerable; at least you haven’t watched the cow being slaughtered but raw liver and stomach are certainly not my choice for a delicious meal. I ate raw stomach pissed and nearly gagged and the liver I mistakenly took for acorn curd (도투리묵). In the restaurant’s lighting the colours weren’t so distinguishable.
Raw liver (생간) prettied up with sesame seeds…
acord curd (도투리묵) sprinkled with sesame seeds
If you like healthy snacks, nothing could be more natural and packed with protein than silk worm cocoon (번데기). Indeed, the silk worm was an important food along the silk routes though Chinese silk worm is generally much larger than the type eaten in Korea.
Chinese silk worm snacks – meaty!
Being pissed helps swallow this delicacy and a chaser of soju or beer will purge the mouth of the muddy flesh but will do little to remove the aftertaste which incidentally, tastes exactly like the smell they exude while being steamed. A toothpick is a necessary to dig out the numerous shards of exoskeleton that lodge between the teeth. In reality, eating this should be no different from eating a prawn or shrimp but of course the dislike is cultural and as Herodotus said, Nomos is king of all.
you can definitely taste the land in the flesh of a silk worm (Korean silk-worm)
Not my bag!
Grasshopper (메뚜기), coated in red pepper paste (고추장) is another crunchy, healthy snack and I know a few students, usually boys, who eat these and silk with as much enthusiasm as many kids eat candy. However, cultural chasms are narrowing and this year a London pizza restaurant started serving a grasshopper topping.
How to ruin a good pizza. All the rage? I don’t think so.
After a line up of insects, barbecued intestines (막창) are un-adventurous, especially after a soju and even the infamous chicken’s arse hole (똥집), in reality the gizzard which functions as a secondary stomach, or chicken feet (닭발), are palatable.
Chicken feet, (닭발), spend most of their life walking on shite and where’s the meat?
For a real experience, you can try saeng-nakji (생낙지), small octopuses swimming in a sea of sesame oil and swimming they are as they are still alive. Whether it is urban myth I am unsure, but apparently, a small number of people choke to death every year from octopi which refuse to go down without a fight.
Nakji (the small octopus) often eaten alive.
I love black pudding but some cultural obstacle stops me enjoying, sun-ji-guk (선지국) which is basically soup made with blood. Sundae (순대), is pig intestine sausage stuffed with noodle and vegetables but I find it difficult to eat perhaps because it often appears in small road side stalls accompanied by pigs intestines, and boiled lung. Most of the food you’d class as ‘Klingon’ are the types of food Koreans believe increase a man’s virility, ‘put hair on your chest,’ and are usually predominantly eaten by men (and in some cases boys). Korean food tends to leave you either in a cold sweat or totally impartial and so many examples are simply – ‘okay,’ or as Koreans might say, ‘just’ (그냥). Personally, I don’t think Korean food rates alongside Cantonese, Thai, Indian or Mexican, but there is nonetheless something alluring and fascinating about it. However, one shouldn’t think their culture aloof, I can remember, as a boy, eating pig feet and distinctly recall the bristly hairs on the shins that tickled your chin as you gnawed the meat. I can remember my mum cooking tripe, probably the only meal she cooked which I couldn’t eat and occasionally, I’d arrive home on Saturday afternoon to the welcome of a pig’s head bobbling in a pot as my father prepared brawn. When I was still a teenager I can remember traversing Limassol, Cyprus, trying to find a restaurant that served cow brain, a supposed local delicacy. Thank-god I never ate it! Most of the food we would class as ‘gross,’ we unwittingly eat, pulverised to a paste in potted meats, formed into patties or luncheon meats or destined to appear in those famous anatomical dumping grounds, the pork pie and the sausage.
Like northern English black-sausage
But don’t worry, alongside the foods fit for a full-blooded Klingon, are the burgers, pizza and fried chicken we waygukin love so much. Burgers, I can leave; I don’t trust them and the patties just don’t look like meat. At least with Korean ‘horror food’ you know exactly what you are eating, a silk worm is a silk worm but in the modern food industry, typified by the USA and Europe, knowing exactly what your food consists of is becoming both a secret and a rapidly disappearing right. And have you noticed when eating Korean pork, that it doesn’t drown the barbecue in water…?
© Nick Elwood 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
As Delicious as it Looks! (미더덕)
The first time I ate midoedeok (미더덕) it was hidden in a bowl of soup and probably bobbling under a slice of kimchi, either way, I didn’t see it. After wedging it between my teeth I crushed it and was shocked when it spat out a horrid sort of detergent. I almost threw up! I’ve never eaten midoedoek since and if I get any strange soup I dredge the bottom of my bowl looking for it. Don’t accuse me of being politically incorrect, I know plenty of Koreans who hate it.
Animal, vegetable, alien?
For years, I had no idea if it was animal, vegetable, or possibly alien, most likely from the Klingon home world! For a while I believed it may have been some sort of testicle and its texture confirmed this, a hard exterior, smooth and slippy with some dubious inner core, but there was an absence of any tubing and because it resembled a mammalian testicle, I was bewildered because, being not much bigger than an acorn, I couldn’t think what animal owned such a nut. Rams’ bollocks are huge, a pair being as large an weighty as a coconut, and there aren’t many cats in Korea and those silly little handbag dogs Koreans are into, the sort that are too flimsy to walk against the mildest breeze, their balls can’t be much bigger a peanut. So it must come from the sea, I thought. Do fish have bollocks? Or perhaps they belong to the octopus but balls are usually carried in a bag and I’ve never seen an octopus with a knacker sack! Well, my Korean friends seemed to have no idea what they were and were equally as mystified.
Related to the sea squirt (멍개)
Then I discovered, they are related to the sea squirt and that monster of a tumour, the mongke (멍개), which also tastes of detergent. You can see midoedoek in the street markets and supermarkets and you either love them or hate them – a bit like olives really, which is interesting as they are the same shape and size. Unfortunately, they don’t have a common English name so, should you want to order them from your local fish market back home, you will have to ask for styela clava. Mmmm! Sounds as delicious as it looks which is why they are usually hidden in the bottom of your bowl of seafood soup….
Midoedok (미더덕), Styela Clavca get erect when hungry and look like this!
Fondling them obviously causes arousal. A particularly long styela clava. Why are so many Korean foods phallic?
© Nick Elwood 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
Feeding Mummy's Milk
Fab!
I’m often amazed at the blunders Koreans make in translating English and anyone who has lived in Korea even a short time will have amassed some great examples. In my writing, I write little Korean but I strive to make sure my spelling is correct. Conversely, many Koreans are quite happy to widely publicise something in crappy English, probably under the assumption that if you can tag an English sentence on your product or business sign, it is invested with greater authority. The gaff isn’t so bad, and can even be cute, on a mug or bar of chocolate; I have an old notebook on my desk on which is an enormous strawberry which a couple of years ago, when new, was scented. A caption under it reads: I’ve got a loaf of strawberries.’ But my favourite, from a packets of smoked salmon, reads:
‘Around June to September, in a something sun, 3-5 year old well-grown salmon that have brilliant gesture and swim through sea and river along the blue and dear coast of the Pacific Ocean have very good quality of flesh and taste so good and have got praised as food of low-calorie. More than one century salmon has got praise of epicures all over the world. Salmon taste from soft to strong with many nutrients and special pink colour flesh create fantastic mood and taste.’
Nursery rhymes
Ironically, the crappy English actually spurs my taste buds in anticipation of that creamy, special pink flesh, unfortunately eaten many years ago. But when the ‘company’ or individual is involved in English education or aspires to be ‘educated’, it becomes a glaring error upon which an astute reader is going to base a value judgment. Online commentary on anything regarding education demands careful checking in terms of vocabulary, grammar and spelling and should one make even the slightest mistake, it can be expected that no matter how sound the argument, your credibility will be vaporized.
I quite like nursery rhymes! No! I don’t wander around my one-room singing them to myself but as a musician, I have an appreciation for their catchy melodies. The English composer Roger Quilter wove a very successful overture, a Children’s Overture, out of nursery rhymes which I frequently happened to play as a flautist in the British Army. Quilter was a student of the extremely eccentric Australian composer, Percy Grainger.
A year ago I bought a a set of two CDs in E-Mart, badly named, English Chants and of course, a nursery rhyme is nothing like a chant. However, out of the 160 songs, I thought I was sure to find a few of use especially with classics like Humpty Dumpty, Hickory Dickory Dock and Polly put the Kettle on, included.
It was only in a bout of boredom that this week, I perused the titles of the other songs:
Time to stetch – your guess is as good as mine but I’ll go for ‘stretch’.
Going to the friend’s house – no comments!
Going to the Pediatrician, Going to the ENT Doctor and Going to Orthodontist, presume the child is both acquainted with medical terminology and of a sickly disposition.
Going the Department – I can only guess is meant to be a ‘store.’
It’s a snack time – it amusing.
Want to go Potty – Who? Hilarious
Going Back from School – simply confusing!
On birthday – and whose birthday might that be?
But the king of all gaffs is, Feeding Mommy’s Milk. One still has to ask, ‘feeding mommy’s milk’ to whom? And the lyrics are classic:
Are you hungry? Are you hungry?
Feed mummy’s milk
And taste it good.
Sucking. Sucking. Sucking. Sucking
Mummy’s milk is good.
Are you done?
Hear it for yourself – drinking a glass of milk, especially with a straw, will never be the same again!
Click link below:
© Nick Elwood 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
Emergency Dump!
You’re not supposed to write pooh stories! Actually, a few months ago someone made some nasty comments about an article I wrote about pooh humour. Anyone who has a problem with pooh stories is simply anal and needs to loosen up! Anyone who has traveled outside the domain of Club Med 18-30, anyone who has had to eat a drastically different diet or squat and then clean their bum from a tin can of water using their hand, knows the subject can be very entertaining and is well worth writing about, for all sorts of reasons.
Every Friday, I eat lunch with my boss; not an occasion to talk about pooh! Usually we go somewhere a little further afield than the area in which we live. I’d woken up early and started working straight away and didn’t each breakfast until around 11 am, which was no problem – except I’d cooked bean soup (된장 치게) and eaten it with some kimchi and acorn curd (두투리묵). The fuse for such food, especially without rice, depends on the individual, but mine is about an hour. If liquids are consumed, and I’d had several cups of coffee, it can be as little as 45 minutes. But I so engrossed in my writing, I was completely oblivious to my mistake.
Pooh on a bag
My boss calls at 11.30 and we drive off to the area fronting Keimyung University. Fifteen minutes later and we are sat in chicken bar. Its predominantly a beer bar that sells chicken by night and predominantly a chicken bar that serves beer in daylight hours, they’re all over Korea. The chicken is drenched in spicy sauce, or is fried in batter or perhaps served with a sweet soy sauce and a beer swishes it down nicely but, I never drink before work.
I’d felt the warnings on the brief walk to the restaurant but it hadn’t clicked and I was thinking they’d disappear but they actually intensified. I began to perspire. There was the panic too, because you know that when in the grip of needing to defecate you will do it anywhere; in your pants, squatting behind a car in public and even bent over in your bedroom holding your backside in a plastic shopping bag. This is almost my fourth year in Korea and I’ve never had to crap in any other toilet than my own unless in a hotel or the comfort of someone’s home. I’ve never had to take my chances on the street where, unless owned by nice restaurants or western style eateries, you can guarantee toilets are going to be grim.
About to explode!
There have only been a two occasions in my life when the fuse has been so short that I’ve only had seconds to find a toilet. Once was in Osnabruck, Germany, after a military exercise when all the toilets in my barrack block were occupied. I had to pooh in a carrier bag in my bedroom and that was illuminating as you never realise how hot and heavy a pooh can be until you hold one in a bag. The next occasion was some 20 years later, again in Germany, in a small town close to Bonn. That was out of the blue; one moment I was fine walking through a quaint little village with a small stream running through the center of it, next moment I had seconds to find a toilet. My third ordeal had just started!
‘I’ve got to use the loo!’ I announced and immediately made for the back of the restaurant. We should have chosen a more up-market location as the toilet was shared by several establishments and not easily reached. I found it with thirty seconds to spare and of course, not only was it a squat down job but there was no toilet paper. But I’m good, ex-military good and before I’d even got to the door and discovered conditions, I’d covered my options. My jeans and shoes were off within seconds and having already spotted the hose in the small garden that lay close by; I turned it on an dragged it into the toilet wedging the gushing end down the drain just inside the toilet door. Then, I closed the door, took off my boxers and a second later, in one expulsion, my late breakfast was reincarnated. As I was hosing my arse and swishing the bean soup into the sewers of Daegu, I suddenly realised what had caused my upset – my badly timed, watery breakfast! Drying my arse on one of the large hankies I use in hot weather, I quickly got dressed, repositioned the hose and washed my hands. Although the toilet was was grotty the soap was actually quite nice. I hadn’t even got my feet wet and neither had I crapped on my heels which is always a danger on a squat loo and is why I take my pants off! And by the time I got back to my table, a lovely plate of spicy chicken awaited.
© Nick Elwood 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
Kimchi-ism
It smells bad, it can taste revolting, and is a major cause of conflict in university accommodation kitchens worldwide, where the sharp smell oozing from refrigerators upsets non-Koreans. It hangs on your breath with greater offence and persistence than any French gastronomical delight. Garlic can certainly be rude but enhanced and enlivened by numerous chemical processes and suspend in cabbage water and the pungent juices of fermented anchovy, the power to offend becomes a chemical and biological capability. Nothing is polite about it, it is totally ‘in your face’ in its onslaught of your taste buds, nasal passages and doesn’t look too pleasant either. It lacks any refinement or subtlety and amongst ‘offensive’ foods ranks as a weapon of mass destruction. You wouldn’t gorge or binge on it, indeed I wouldn’t even call it delicious and I could certainly live without it. If I were to be isolated on a dessert island for a year it wouldn’t be on my list of essential items. And yet paradoxically, it is one of the most exciting taste sensations in the world. If there is one food so aptly capable of defining a nation, so synonymous with a people, it is cabbage kimchi(배추 김치).
There are many types of kimchi, and of those types many variations, and of those variations many permutations depending on a range of factors. Kimchi is one of numerous Korean, fermented foods, others including makkalli, bean paste (된장), and soy sauce (간장). Only when kimchiis old enough for the initial processes of fermentation to have ceased, will the flavour be consistent. At all other times, you can’t eat the same kimchi twice as the taste is always in a state of transition. Canned and packeted kimchi are available but these should only ever be eaten as a last resort. Canned kimchi, often from China, is especially disgusting!
Welcome to Korea!
Traditional fermented beans (메주)
The most popular type of kimchi, and the one most armed in terms of offensive capability, is cabbage kimchi (배추 김치). Cabbage is well known for its powers to unleash unpleasant odours once its fibers have traversed the intestinal tract and are approaching a transmuted reincarnation via the human Cloaca Maxima. With cabbage kimchi however, your digestive organs can take a break as most of the chemical process which release those aromas, have already been activated and are in a chemical flurry approximate to final stages of processing via the large intestine. Indeed, I would go as far as suggesting that function of that plastic Tupperware tub or kimchi pot in which kimchi is stored upon being made, is basically a portable large intestine containing the numerous biological processes. In that Pandora’s box of mischief: the most infamous kiss-killer of all, garlic, is present in its most potent form, crushed! Added to this is minced ginger, a Korean type of chive (실파) and mooli (무) which while not individually notorious, collectively possess powers of repetition which help strengthen the garlic and intensify its potency. Even at this stage, a burp of this concoction is lethal. Added to this, is the cabbage which after having been submersed in salted water, is already chemically active.
Kkanari - fish sauce - the concentrated odour of a million sweaty feet
The addition of fish sauce, (액젓) famous across the Asia, which is another fermented product made from anchovy or kkanari (까나리 – sand lance), completes the recipe. Of all the noxious odours added to kimchi, anchovy or sand lance sauce is the most vile. I’ve often entertained myself by inviting guests to sniff an open bottle as I’m casually cooking, with a little encouragement such as: ‘smell this, it’s lovely,’ or, ‘this has got to be my most favourite smell.’ Usually, a good whiff will propel them back a few meters with as much force as would a couple of hundred volts of electricity. Once amassed and fizzling away, the flavours and smells blend in a process which can last a considerable amount of time, depending on temperature.
Comparing the kimchi pot (김치독) or Tupperware tub to a colon is not an exaggeration. I have slept in the same room as as my gestating kimchi and in the first week of fermentation, gasses produced within the Tupperware colon would cause the lid to pop-off about once every twenty-four hours. If this occurred at night, the escaped aroma was initially enough to wake me. I have since become quiet comfortable sleeping in the same room as fermenting kimchi and find the smell highly evocative – ironically, not evocative of life in Korea, but life back in the UK where living with friends necessitated containing kimchi smells to my bedroom and not the shared kitchen.
Kimchi encapsulates Korea at many levels. Many countries have a national food with which they are identified: Italy – pizza, Germany – sausages or sauerkraut (which is also fermented cabbage), France – smelly, soft cheeses, frog legs, snails and cordon-bleu cooking, England – fish and chips, roast beef and tea, Scotland – shortbread and haggis, but few have the ability to represent their nation with such precision as does kimchi. While kimchi comes in blaze of spicy colour, the foods of other nations, delicious as they are, remain purely monochrome.
Kimchi is a pot-pourii of Korea, a culinary collage of so many integral Korean elements – garlic, ginger, Korean chili powder (고추 가루), mooli (무) and fish sauce. These ingredients are the basis of almost all Korean cooking and representative of so much of the peninsula’s farming. You can hardly step in a direction without seeing pots of chili, patches of mooli and even on the mountains sides I’ve seen small plots painstakingly hoed out of the rocky soil, blossoming with such vegetables. Local variation on the cabbage kimchirecipe, as well as banchan side dishes in general, and most other Korean foods, adds a further interesting dimension. While many national foods are now factory produced, often resulting in grossly inferior products (shortbread is a good example), kimchi, even when sold in markets, is homemade and its production evokes a great sense of pride. Korean women, and even some men, are proud of their kimchi making prowess and whenever a gift of kimchi is given, it should be respected.
The making of kimchi is very much determined by the seasons with particular kimchibeing made at certain times of year, and for cabbage kimchi, this is late Autumn to early winter. One of my most memorable images of Korea was seeing an enormous stack of Chinese cabbage (배추) outside Shinoo Supermarket, in Song-So, swathed in wintry mist and beside which a couple of store workers huddled around a bonfire burning on the pavement. I’ve never see such a sight since. And when it is time to make kimchi, members of the family or friends, sometimes communities, females more than males, are brought together.
Kimchi pots (김치독) at Keimyung University
There is always a random element in kimchi production, something beyond the control of the ‘cook’, and hence tasting the final product is always an exciting moment. Like making English tea, you can follow the recipe and time the brewing meticulously, but the production is influenced by factors beyond the recipe, it might be the temperature, the humidity or the quality of ingredients of that particular season. Part of the fun involved in kimchi making is the pursuit of perfection in the light of random influences. And if the kimchi itself isn’t synonymous with Korea, the pots (김치독) in which it is traditionally stored, can be seen sitting in vacant corners, on rooftop and apartment verandas across the entire peninsula. The kimchi pot is as Korean as soju, mountain temples and the cawing of the magpie and their production an ancient and noble art. But the making of kimchihas also kept abreast of modern developments. Kimchi has traveled into space and the kimchi refrigerator is now a popular sight in many Korean homes.
My kimchi 'colon'
Learning how to make kimchi and any of the extensive range of side dishes collectively known as banchan (반찬) and of which cabbage kimchi is the King, is difficult. In my area of Daegu are three small shops which produce homemade banchan but they staff don’t like being photographed or watched whilst working. My grandmother, the daughter of a Scottish baker, was just as defensive about her shortbread which was superior to any factory produced shortbreads.
Waygukins and Koreans alike will never grasp the potential of their smelly delicacy until they are able to eat and smell it in isolation, basically, outside of Korea. Like, garlic, the best defense from the offensive smell is to ingest it yourself and once you do that you no longer notice it. You can walk in and out of Koreans homes and their restaurants and never really smell kimchi and yet the whole nation reeks of it and everywhere everyone chuffes out its pungent odours. The only reason you don’t smell it is partly because you have acclimatised to it and because you eat it. I remember arriving at Kimpo International Airport after a holiday, and as I walked into the arrivals hall I suddenly noticed the smell of kimchibut no sooner had I noticed it, than it disappeared. But if you visit Korean friends in the UK, or they visit your house, the odour of kimchiand of garlic is very strong and even unpleasant. I often notice how Korean Air and Emirates, provide Korean meals and kimchi on flights into Seoul and wonder if this is to acclimatise passengers to the guff of garlic and kimchi, prior to landing.
The taste of kimchi has a bizarre appeal and every Korean has a liking for a particular type; for some it’s fresh kimchi in which the fermentation hasn’t really started, for others it’s the tangy bite of old kimchi which draws your tongue like cold tea or strong red wine. And it can be used in a multitude of ways: barbecued, added to stews, used for soup, put into pancakes, fried with rice, minced into hamburger patties, rinsed in water and added to cold soups chilled with ice cubes. When the fermentation process has stopped, and kimchi is left standing, sometimes for months, it is often attacked by a glueppy white mold which lays over the uppermost leaves. At this stage the kimchi is at its sourest and is ideal for cooking kimchi stew (김치찌개), the mold simply being washed off. I don’t think any westerner truly enjoys kimchi first time, but the more we familiarise ourselves with its guises, idiosyncrasies and long and ancient history, the more entrenched our love affair with it becomes and the more we defend it to those barbarians who claim it stinks or tastes revolting!
Kimchi Stew
Twisting and weaving into Korea’s distant past, like one of the gnarled and knotted roots on the mountains, Kimchi, like its people, has endured and adapted. Originally it wouldn’t have contained chili, this being an addition sometime after 1500, when the chili plant arrived in Korea. Of all the foods capable of representing a nation, kimchi is the most personal, the most intimate and the most capable of embodying Korea. It transcends simply being a product of the soil, its production etches out a seasonal calendar, it brings families and communities together, it provides both national and regional identity with space for a little individual flare, and at tables across the country people bond as individual batches are critiqued, compared and celebrated. Even the frosty bite of winter and the hot balmy days of hanyorum (high summer) have a role to play in determining the flavour. In the past, Koreans believed that the foods that suited individuals best were the ones grown in the soil in which their ancestors had both toiled and been buried. It was the ‘fruits’ of the soil which powered families across the generations. When companies produce canned kimchi, or even packeted kimchi, they grossly miss the mark because not only is it supposed to be alive and active, but it has to be Korean. Dead kimchi, kimchi castrated of its chemical process is not kimchi and indeed Koreans have taken foreign kimchi producers to international court over such issues. You can eat French brie or Camembert made in Spain and probably not notice a difference, but kimchi that is dead or not even from Korea, is simply not kimchi.
Useful Resources:
Beyond the Blog – Maangchi: Queen of Korean Cooking
© Nick Elwood 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
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