Detour Korea: Kimchi for Koreans

By Yas Mamemachi

Seoul, Korea

Kimchi, Koreans’ soul food (Photo by Kazuhito Hara)

ermented food is in focus in Japan. Dietarily speaking, it can help to reduce high cholesterol levels in your blood, as well as strengthen and support your digestive and immune systems.

Kimchi, a traditional Korean dish made of vegetables, in particular Chinese cabbage, with varied seasonings is a case in point.

Japan is the number one importer of this Korean soul food, or the “food for the future” (as they proudly call it). According to Korean governmental statistics, more than 85% of kimchi products go to Korea’s neighbor.

Kimchi reminded me of my visit to Seoul in 1986 when I reported on the Davis Cup tennis tournament between Korea and Thailand, and in 1988 for the Seoul Olympic Games. In 1986, I was assigned to be there for a joint reporting project with Korean partners, including a photographer, Yoon Pyong Gu, who was the same age as mine, for both Japanese and Korean sports magazines.

We had done a good job and were satisfied with a variety of Korean dishes, including kimchi, in Seoul, not the present super-modern capital of Korea, but the pre-Olympic city with a very different sort of atmosphere.

I have not seen him since then. I heard that he went to Antarctica twice and climbed Mount Everest once to shoot Korean expedition teams, thus making him quite famous for a while.

“Korea,” I muttered to myself. The word encouraged me to revisit the country to see him again and ask him if kimchi was really their soul food during the socioeconomic development the country has achieved in the post-Olympic decades, which might have led to some possible changes in dietary habits.

I emailed him to check his schedule and he gave me a quick reply, saying “Waiting for you.” All right, let’s go to Seoul for a weekend.

Saturday: Concerned but not too late

The Korean Airline I took from Narita touched down at Incheon international airport, one of the airline hubs in Asia, for about two hours. After an easy entry process, an airport limousine bus took me out to the heart of the Korean capital on the highway along the Hang Gang river. In the bus a frequent Japanese visitor told his friends to look at the many bicycles in the bike lanes along the river bank, because bicycling was gaining popularity in Seoul.

I glimpsed at the riverbank, wondering how much the country had changed between 1986 and 2010. The peaceful view brought back my old and dark memories regarding the 1986 visit.

When I received my journalist visa to enter Korea at the Office of Consulate General of Korean in Tokyo, the officer in charge told me that young and hard working international journalists tended to be adeptly used by North Korea, warning me politely that they were always watching you whenever you traveled to Seoul.

I also remembered that my friend, Pyong Gu, told me from time to time that members of the secret police would probably be standing at the corners of the city’s underground walkways, saying that we should move past them quickly.

These are stories that were common before the Berlin Wall came down. Twenty-four years later North Korea still menaces Seoul, which give me mixed feelings.

At about 15:00 a gentleman with gray hair and smoking a pipe showed up in front of the hotel I was staying at. It was my old friend.

My interview with him about kimchi in Korea today started in my hotel room. He pointed out two Korean words. One is “sikgu” (si=eating, kgu=mouth, according to him), and the other “hansotpop” (han=one, sot=pot, pop=rice, according to him). Both mean that Koreans eat the same rice from the same pot, stressing the family character of eating, he said.

“In other words,” said Yoon. “All the family members have breakfast and dinner at the same table and at the same time, everyday. There are rice, hot soup, and kimchi on the table. That was the confirmed image of family life here for years and years. But not any more.”

He blamed the growing fanatical competitiveness in basic education for entering leading universities, which started in the 1990s, for destroying these family traditions.

“Many children leave home at 7:00 in the morning for school and come back home at 10-11:00 in the evening because they go to prep schools for an extra four or five hours of studies after regular school,” said Yoon. “For many parents, it is almost impossible to share dinner with their children in this country.”

With this reality kimchi is dramatically losing its image as a food that holds families together, he added.

Kim and Yoon (right) (Photo by Yas Mamemachi)

After the interview we moved to a “creative” Korean restaurant to have dinner with Kim Su-Hyun, a young woman who looks like a fashion model and works for the Korean International Cooperation Agency or KOICA, a Korean governmental aid agency. Kim once climbed to the 6,500-meter point of Mt. Everest with Yoon. She joined the party as one of two women who were chosen as today’s active and independent Korean women. Since then, the photographer has become one of her most trusted friends.

“For many Koreans, kimchi means a lot more than the country’s traditional food,” Kim said. “Kimchi makes Koreans distinctive in Asia. Otherwise, we are just another Asian people.”

Kim is from the southern part of the country, which is historically famous for a variety of kimchi products. Every year the national kimchi festival is held in the area. No doubt she is especially proud of the Korean food.

The international aid organization she works for provides aid to many developing countries. However, Korea was not born to be one of the socioeconomically developed countries in the world, she said.

“Back in the not-so-old days, we could hardly survive without a supportive community. We all were too poor to have anything to share but home-made kimchi. For us, kimchi means something can be given with love to anybody, no matter who he or she is and how tough your life is.”

“In other words, kimchi reminds me of our difficult time and makes me appreciate our present life,” she added.

In fact, it is easy to understand that kimchi has had a dominant position in Korea’s food culture, if you look from one corner to another in the city. As Yoon mentioned, it may not be easy to maintain the traditional way of presenting kimchi on the dinner table at seven, though.

For instance, when you drop into any convenient store near a junior or senior high school late in the afternoon, you can see students hanging around and eating instant noodle soup. Almost all of them buy a small cup of kimchi with the fast food.

Kimchi has been compromised with other familiar dishes, including pasta, hot dogs, and Chinese egg rolls. In other words, you can eat kimchi pasta, kimchi hot dogs, and kimchi egg rolls here in Seoul.

“For many foreigners, Koreans may seem to be addicted to kimchi,” sais Kim with a smile.

But she admits that she is not confident that kimchi will be “special” in Korean culture and/or food culture in the future, though she is positive that Koreans are going to continue to eat the country’s traditional cuisine.

In Korea, it used to be said that women in their 20s should not get married unless they have been taught by their mothers about their family styles and traditions of kimchi-making.

Today, many highly educated women in their 20s, like Kim, play significant roles in the country’s socioeconomic activities. As you can imagine, many of them have little time to and/or are discouraged to learn how to make kimchi from their mothers. Soon, not a few of them will say, Why should we care about just another fermented food?

“Personally, I am concerned about that reality,” said Kim. “However, I think it’s not too late.”

According to statistics, relatively large families are still significant in terms of Korea’s society, while nuclear families are growing rapidly, says Kim.

“I grew up in a large family. If I felt bothered doing some traditional things, such as learning how to make kimchi, my grandmother played an anchor role, saying ‘Young lady, will you give up being Korean and become American?’ I think it was very good for me.

Kim added that now is the time to think about such changes in the country’s food culture before it is too late, while large families still have a dominant share in Korean family composition.

Sunday: Symbol of advanced culture

It was a rainy Sunday. I had an appointment with Ms. Beeham, a Korean abstract painter who used to travel back and forth between Korea and Japan. She has keen insights based on her knowledge and experience of art, culture and food in both countries. She can speak Japanese fluently. It was my first time to meet her since the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.

Soram’s, a Korean restaurant where we met, was famous for authentic Korean dishes, the ones made only with local ingredients.

Asked whether kimchi and what it means in the country’s food culture might have changed during Korea’s socioeconomic development, she smiled, saying that a country’s traditional food, such as kimchi, developed with its long history. “I think it won’t change easily.”

Korea has long and severe winters lasting about four months. For most Koreans, deeply fermented Chinese cabbage, which is the basis of kimchi, is the only vegetable to eat in the winter.

Being fermented for a longer time is the most distinctive part of kimchi production, making it different from traditional cuisines in other countries, such as Japan, China, and the West, she pointed out.

Asked if the tradition of each family having its own recipe for kimchi may vanish someday, she nodded and said, “The tradition might be gone, however, a local variety of kimchi will survive because it will create big business opportunities and large firms will not hesitate to maximize their profits.”

Asked again if that implies there is always something that changes and something that doesn’t, she replied, “Yes,” and added, “I think fermented food is the next stage from fresh food. In other words, kimchi shows that Korea is culturally advanced.”

Her answer seemed to say that a culturally advanced society will be able to live up to its tradition and many changes to come.

After the luncheon meeting, I went to the kimchi museum, located 30 minutes by train from the heart of Seoul. I wondered if it might have been like a small British Museum. However, it was located underground in a gigantic shopping mall and looked like a special site of the mall.

Unlike the mall aboveground crowded with many shoppers, young families, and happy couples, here there were few visitors in the museum. Among them three young people, probably college students, caught my attention.

They included a woman who was either Korean-American or a Korean studying at an American university. In the beginning they were just hanging around the museum and using words such as “like,” “you know,” and “cool.” That proved they were young college students without any doubt.

Then, she gradually took time to look around all the exhibits. Finally, she stopped at a couple of sections to read the explanations carefully, relating some stories about her Korean family to her friends.

Her friends were not interested in her stories and went ahead without her. However, she kept reading and studying the exhibits.

After they left, the museum quickly became quiet. Above the museum the shopping mall was thronged with people.

It was time to go to the airport for the last flight to Tokyo. I asked myself if kimchi was still Korea’s soul food. I would say, “Definitely, yes.” But such a topic related to food culture is too interesting and complicated to get the right answers on a weekend trip. My detour to Korea, searching for kimchi for Koreans, will continue.