Bibimbap - Origins and Brief History

The earliest written record of bibimbap appears in the annals of the kings as "bubimbap", a light meal for the king. The origin itself is speculated, however, three theories currently exist. One is that of farmer origin. As farmers were poor and a lot of work was demanded of them outside of the home, it is believed that rice with some kinds of vegetation could quickly be mixed in a large bowl or container for communal feeding. Another theory is that after ancestor ceremonies which required the preparing of fruits, vegetables, rice cakes, fish, and many more "thankful" foods, leftovers were mixed to create simple meals after the intensive labor of ancestor meal preparations. The third suggested theory is that in uprisings and battles, there was not time for food preparations so rice, the "bread" of the east, was mixed with whatever foods were handy to create a meal.

Although the historical development is fogged over by the mists of time, the present bibimbap food culture is evident in restaurants throughout Korea. Various "famous" kinds of bibimbap are known throughout Korea -- they are known by their city of origins and have flavors and ingredients that suit the citizens (and some argue, temperaments) of the specific locales.

Jeonju bibimbap - having spicy (red pepper sauce) and bean sprouts as the main ingredients, the lip-smacking spicy-flavored spice complementing the cooling sprouts has made Jeonju bibimbap as one of the most well-known bibimbaps in Korea.


Jinju bibimbap - made with herbs and SOOKJU sprouts and a non-spicy sauce, probably of soy sauce base; it is usually served with an egg (raw or fried).


Andong bibimbap - made with herbs and beef, and served with a special soy sauce.


Tong-young bibimbap - made with various mountain vegetables and herbs; usually it has no red spicy sauce. Also this dish is usually meatless and eggless, but frequently tofu chunks appear among the vegies.


Masan bibimbap - made with bean sprouts and other simple vegies topped with a glob of red pepper sauce-duingjjang sauce and an egg, raw or fried. Jeonju bibimbap and Masan bibimbap are quite similar in their spice factor, but then the two cities are quite close with much travel to and from Masan being routed through the larger city of Jeonju.

My students - Oh Hyewon and Kim Yongha - compiled this research and pictures for a phenomenally well organized presentation. They also added that bibimbap has a lot of cultural value and Korea is marketing this most precious traditional food as a food symbolizing coexistence, cooperation (eating together) which promotes harmony, peace and friendship.

Beliefs about Red Bean Soup (팥죽)

Red bean soup, in Korea known as 팥죽, originated in China, and it was the custom there to make red beans for casting out demons and performing other supersititous acts. Korea has similar beliefs about negating bad fortune with the fearful red colored beans as both cultures view the color "red" as a symbol of positive yang energy for warding off negative energy forces. Exactly when red beans or red bean soup was introduced to Korea is unknown. We do know, however, that the earliest records concerning red bean soup in Korea are recorded in ancient books noting that the beans were to be eaten on the winter solstice (동지). And over time other records show that red bean soup was not eaten only during the winter solstice but were often eaten throughout the winter and were readily available in the inns (주막) of the past. This makes a lot of sense for the agrarian culture as grain was expensive and often in short supply in the long winter months of no food production. Beans, therefore, were the food of the peasants but which still provided energy. The beans could be and were often a meal by themselves.

Korea likely borrowed their superstitious beliefs about red beans and red bean soup from the Chinese as there was much cultural sharing between the countries. However, there might be variation in the superstitious beliefs, so the following beliefs are those which Korea held until quite recently (some beliefs are still marginally held). That said, red beans and red bean soup are now ritual foods that people recognize at certain events and/or rites of passage, but the reason for serving those foods is often lost to the younger participants in this scientific, educated and non-superstitous age.


Red Bean Superstitions in Korea

(1) In order to prevent a disaster or to avoid ghosts within a home, red beans (the color itself is supposed to be frightening) are scattered in front of the main entrance of a house or in a crock (장독대) before making the red bean soup itself. The cooking and eating of the beans themselves is a ritual for preventing bad luck and the ever-present epidemic diseases.
(2) When moving to or building a house, red bean soup is shared with the new neighbors as the belief is held that demons around the house will be cast away (and I guess maybe the neighbors don't want the demons either and thus the communal demon eviction).
(3) When someone gets ill, red bean soup is made and spilled in the street. By doing so, the red color of the soup is thought to drive away the disease.
(4) When bereaved, neighbors make red bean soup and give to the bereaved neighbors. This practice is a communal way of praying for the souls of the departed and wish them well. (Nobody wants an unhappy or unappeased ghost around!)
(5) Farmers eat red bean soup and the act of farmers eating red bean soup particularly on Dongjinal (winter solstice) is a wish for a prosperous rich year with abundant harvest. Winter solstice is a day of the year which is founded on the belief of balancing the yin and yang harmony and balance of the universe, and farmers need to the harmonious balance to ensure good production of their crops.

Red Bean Soup in Japan and China

Much cultural sharing has occurred in the history of the far northeastern Asian countries: China, Korea and Japan. China was the big brother to Korea and culture was diffused onward to the little brother country. Often times from Korea the culture was further diffused to the islands of Nippon (Japan). And within these three countries, red bean soup exists; however, of course the basic soup recipe has been borrowed into and adapted to harmonize with the cultural tastes of each country.

China's present red bean soup is called 紅豆沙 (hǒng dòu shā). The color red is a lively color evoking luck and happiness, and therefore, red bean soup is eaten at special celebrations like Chinese New Year, weddings, birthdays, among many others. In and unique to China, red bean soup is a sweet dessert especially served hot in winter (as a yang food it is warming), but it's also served cold in summer frequently as the main dessert following a meal. Leftover soup can also be frozen on a stick to make a frozen red bean popsickle.


In Japan the red bean soup is called shiruko (汁粉) and has mochi in it. The bean paste itself is much sweeter than that in Korea and the bowl of sweet soup may accompany a sour or salty dish as a complement to complete the meal.




This compilation is a reorganization of Jang Moon Young's phenomenal presentation on the origin, superstitions and various forms of red bean soup around Asian countries. Some additional information was taken from Wikipedia to add more clarity to the materials given, but the interesting structure was Moon Young's. :)

The History of "Toppokki"

The first 떡볶이 can be traced back to the Joseon Dynasty when it was the custom that the most delicious food in a village be transported to Hanyang (Seoul) and given to the king. 떡볶이 was actually first prepared into a bar of gooey rice called 가래떡 and was considered so delicious as to be suitable for the king. However in transporting it to Hanyang, the rice bar became hard and lost its flavor and chewiness, so the king's cook boiled the bar of 가래떡 and added soy sauce as a tasty base. Thus, the first 떡볶이 in a sauce was created.

It wasn't until 1953 that 떡볶이 as we know it today was created. A woman by the name of Ma Bok Rim was preparing jajangmyeon, noodles in a fermented soybean sauce, and accidentally dropped the rice cake bar into the sauce. When she pulled out the rice cake, she didn't want to waste it so ate it and really like the flavor. So from then on, she added 신당동 in a red pepper paste sauce (known now as 떡볶이) to her menu. Ma Bok Rim is a grandmother still living today, manages her own 떡볶이 restaurant, and is still lauded as the inventor of 떡볶이.


In the mid-1970s DJ shows were added to popular 떡볶이 restaurants, a very competitive business strategy for competing with other restaurants and attracting more people in the growing economy where people were enjoying meals out more and more. The music boxes in the restaurants enticed all ages to eat for gustatory satisfaction as well as socialization.


In fact, 떡볶이 is greatly enjoyed today, so much so that a Shindangdong 떡볶이 Town, somewhere near Anam Station in Seoul, thrives with street vendors selling the spicy rice cake bars in red pepper sauce and with indenpendent restaurants latching onto the meteor tail of 떡볶이 success.


With the popularization of 떡볶이 among ordinary folks, it has become a symbol of Korean culture. At present it is most popular among school aged children who feast on it at parks, on field trips and in front of their schools where guaranteed a variety of 떡볶이 shops have huge pans of the rice cakes steaming and ready for hungry children the moment they are let out of schools.


Marketing and Globalization of "Toppokki"

떡볶이 is such a popular food in Korea that the Korean government is now trying to develop it as export material, so a laboratory has been set up in Yongin to develop a sauce that will be internationally marketable. Experiential classes are available there too. Also, the government changed the difficult to pronounce name of 떡볶이 into the more foreigner friendly pronunciation of "Toppokki", which will be the name of the marketed foreign food. And then not surprisingly, to further promote and celebrate the food in Korea the Seoul Toppokki Festival (among the myriads of other festivals springing up in Korea in honor of other cities, foods, and famous sites) has been held in Seoul since 2009.


But this is where things start to get weird from the foreigners' perspective. Even cutesy little rice cake characters have been created and given names. To me this is too much like the Japanese comic book series on Sailormoon, with each comic character of course having a name, but the details going so far as to even give each character a blood type, the blood type having very high value in Japan. In Korea, each style of rice cake is given a character name, is animated and cutesified, all important features of advertising in Korea today ... but unfortunately advertising for the Korean or Asian market, not necessarily for the broader international market. Naming each style of rice cake seems practical, just as each style of pasta in Italy has a name ... but not giving each type of race cake a childish animation with proper name. Reminiscent of the Teletobies?!?! Ah, Korea is definitely in the age of cutesy, etsy and animation.

But this food culture is definitely interesting on many levels! This historical study on a food culture was done by Park Jieun and Yoon Migyeong and really exemplify how food has affected culture - the purpose of the assignment. Well done!

Ddeok (Korean Rice Cake)

떡 (rice cake) can be traced back to the bronze age in Korea. In the past it was considered a court cuisine or a noble's food because of the amount of preparation time required in making it. Peasants could not make the rice cake as the making was labor intensive and they often barely could survive on the simple fare they could produce from long hours in the fields, they had no time for making delicacies. Peasants also at times had limited access to rice, so even if having the time, supplies were unavailable. And then of course, the peasant class restricted by the yangban class to what was deemed as lower class foods and 떡 was considered to be food only to be eaten by statused individuals.

Over time, 떡 became a part of ritual, ceremonial and feast foods. When it became acceptable for peasants to eat it is not known as almost nil documentation was made by or on the illiterate lower classes. Yet, some of the rituals that 떡 became very much a part of are 설날, Lunar New Year's day, Korea's biggest holiday. The ritual food is served in the form of 떡국 (rice cake soup), and after eating the rice cake soup on New Year's day, people are considered to age another year - collective eating and collective aging. [Korean age is still determined by the lunar new year. For example, a baby is one year of age at birth due to the 10 months (Korean belief) of gestation, so a baby born in fall can be just a few wee months old and still be said to be two years of age on the babe's first lunar new year's.]


추석, Chuseok or Korean Thanksgiving Day or Harvest Mood Day, is Korea's second largest holiday after 설날. Rice cakes also play a big role in this holiday. The rice cakes are not served in soup but are various in flavor and design, however, in shape they are round, symbolizing the moon. This day is for "prayers" under, perhaps to, the full moon on its closest orbit to the earth. "Prayers" are thanksgivings for the fortunes for the past year and entreaties for good fortunes for the coming year. Many other Asian cultures have moon-shaped cakes on this full moon day also.


떡 is a ceremonial food also and is served at birthdays. Originally people didn't have big birthday celebrations but now individual birthdays are popularly celebrated and what better food to give than a glutinous food that symbolizes 'stickiness', the wish for luck to 'stick' to that person for their upcoming new year of life.


Weddings serve rice cakes, probably also related to the wish for wish for luck to 'stick' to the bride and groom.


And so today, with rice cakes symbolizing the wish for luck to stick to someone, rice cakes elegantly packaged make wonderful personal gifts for many events. In fact, airport terminals in both Korea and Japan stock large selections of fancy rice cakes packaged in various sizes and in huge assortment. I wouldn't be surprised if China and Taiwan also celebrated the indirect wish for luck on people through the giving of rice cakes, especially because rice cakes now come in colors and shapes that grace banquets, table displays as well as the too-popular gift boxes.



Four Primary Types of Rice Cakes

steamed ddeok













pounded ddeok










shaped ddeok










pan-fried ddeok

The majority of this information was compiled by Kim So-jeong and Park Do-young in their presentation on how food and culture are intimately entertwined. Excellent presentation!

Yeot Culture

Yeot is a thick Korean-style syrup - much like corn syrup but less sweet - or in its hard form like a taffy. It is made from a variety of ingredients ... there's rice yeot, daikon (radish) yeot, sweet potato yeot, corn yeot, pumpkin yeot, barley yeot, trichosanthes kirilowii (한을 애기 엿, a Korean medicine) yeot, medicine (양열) yeot, and pheasant yeot which is traditional in Cheju Island. The word "엿" originates from "yit-da" and "yi-oe-ji-da", meaning "connect" and "become connected" respectively, and the uses of yeot can be traced back through the Joseon Dynasty, the Goryeo Dynasty, back to the period of the three states.


Making Yeot Taffy

The making of yeot can be simplified into 8 steps. Sorry, measurements not included in this recipe.

Step 1: Add malt powder to water.
Step 2: After sitting for some time, strain the malt lumps out of the water.
Step 3: Mix cooked white rice in with the strained malt water.
Step 4: Ferment the mixture and strain out the rice.
Step 5: Boil the malt-rice water down until the color becomes a tawny brown.
Step 6: Add ingredients like pine nuts or peanuts and mix together. However, most eye-appealing if nuts on crusted on the outside of the yeot taffy.
Step 7: Spread the malt mixture on a greased tray and allow to cool.
Step 8: Before the mixture hardens, cut into desired shapes.

Yeot Culture Extends Beyond Just Food

My students (Hwang Kyoung Hui and Lee Se Jun) were able to identify as many as 5 cultural meanings of yeot beyond just food - a traditional meaning, a modern-day meaning, and three kinds of insults or negative slang all related to yeot taffy.

The traditional meaning goes back perhaps many centuries and was for wishing good fortune but also having a negative twist. In traditional Confucian times when the woman went to her parents-in-law as a new bride, to her wedding ceremony she would bring yeot which symbolized a stickiness and thus an indirect wish for amicable relations between herself and her mother-in-law. The stickiness of yeot was a suggestion of the feeling of sweetness and stickiness in one's mouth, thus preventing one to talk, and in the bride's case, her inability to talk back to her mother-in-law.

A modern usage of yeot has to do with the homophone 붇다 which means both 'to stick' (the original meaning) and 'to pass', as in 'pass an exam'. Thus, people in modern times give yeot to test-takers as a wish for them to pass the exam, as in "시험에 붇었다 (get permission for the exam) as opposed to "시헙에 떨어지다/떨어짔다" (fail the exam).

Yeot also has slang meanings - three are presented here. The first is related to the Namsadangpae or traveling entertainers, who used vulgar words in their traveling acts targeted to the common people. Somehow through the vulgarity of the traveling entertainers acts yeot came also to be a foul slang for the female's sexual organ.

Another coinage of yeot originated in 1964 during a middle school entrance exam. One of the multiple choice questions asked which kind of plant would make yeot. However, there were two possible answers, the one determined to be correct by the test-makers and the less common answer of "radish juice" (무엿). The students who chose 'radish juice' were marked incorrect causing parents to demonstrate and creating a scandal concerning the competitive exam. Exam-taking periods are taken very seriously in Korea and even today, students born decades after the scandal know the details and are quick to point back to the controversial "무엿과동" (Radish Juice Affair) if they feel a test is unfair.

A final usage of yeot is based on near homophonic sounds of 'yeom' (corpse cleaning and dressing process) and 'yeot'. Perhaps because yeot has been used to keep dead people's mouths closed after death (because of the stickiness), the near homophonic sound of 'yeom' gets articulated into the insult 'yeot' when someone shouts an insult at another. The insult suggests the person died and went to hell.

Clearly yeot is not limited to concepts of just food, as my students Hwang Kyung Hui and Lee Se Jun's presentation demonstrated. The assignment given was to identify an aspect of food in relation to culture in any way, and of the many presentations, this particular one showed most clearly showed that food does not serve the function of feeding one's self for nutrition only, but rather is intimately tied to the culture from which it originated through language, history and belief systems. A very well organized presentation!

Play "The Importance of Being Earnest"

The Cut Glass Theatre proudly presented Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest". Such an extraordinarily funny play based on the trivial importance of middle-class British society of proper nomenclature. The director Gef Somervell states "I only hope we have spoken [Oscar Wilde's] wonderul, intellectually exciting nonsense beautifully enough." Yes, delightfully trivial, down to every detail, but the importance of triviality rules in language, gesture, tone and pause. Well done!

The following comments are taken from the flyer handed out at the door:

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

Though he is recognized as one of the greatest playwrights to come out of England, the Oxford-educated Wilde was, in fact, an Irishman. The colour and lilting rhythms of his homeland are strewn through the dialogue of his plays, and the magic of Celtic mythology surely influenced his little-known but beautiful fairy tales and poetry.

Surprisingly, the phrase "little-known" is aptly applied to Wilde. Though readers the world over are familiar with "The Importance of Being Earnest", and with Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, few are aware of the wider body of word that he produced.

By the age of 46, Wilde had written books of fairy tales (The Happy Prince and Other Tales, and House of Pomegranates), a collection of short stories (Lord Arthur Savile's Crimes and Other Stories), essays on topics ranging from aethetics to philosophy (Intentions, De Produndis, and The Soul of Man Under Socialism), several sparkling plays ("Lady Windermere's Fan", "A Woman of No Importance", and "An Ideal Husband"), a novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray), and numerous poems.

Wilde both challenged and fell victim to the harsh social proprieties of his day. He lived a life of unparalleled flair and panache, and gave the world some its most treasured literature. We are honored to speak his lines.

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."

"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tradjic."

"It takes a great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it."

"Yes, I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotations."

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."

"At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets."

"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."

"To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity."

And a quote from Oscar Wilde that summarizes his opinions about the beauty of expression and the force of it (as he so cleverly demonstrated in his play) - "Mere expression is to an artist the supreme and only mode of life. It is by utterance that we live."

Punishment for Rape in Korea

This is my blog and in it are my words or reconstructions of other people's words after listening to lectures and sharing what I learned. However, once in a grand blue moon do I introduce whole texts of writings of others. This following essay was written by one of my students, Ahn Ji Sung, and was a paper filled with great content based on research. The style of writing was compare/contrast, and of the 120 or so papers I received, Ji Sung's struck me as important to understanding about Korea and its social and legal systems that are rapidly changing (and needing to be further changed) as society is more and more affected by the greed of materialism and losing its centuries-old Confucian values which had intrinsicaly become social controls for maintaining "honorable" bahavior. The text is hers in entirity minus two unclear pronoun changes, and has been reproduced here by permission:

"Rape is one of the most serious crimes, and today there is a lot of controversy in Korea over the appropriate degree of punishment for it. Most Koreans think their punishment for sexual assault is relatively weak compared to other foreign countries in regard to three aspects. First, the maximum level of punishment for rape indicates a huge difference between Korea and other countries. Korean sex offenders are generally imprisoned for the maximum of seven years which is too generous considering they can be sentenced to death in China and Yemen, and they might go through surgical castration in Germany. Also, it was not until November 24, 2010 that Korea started to release identities of these sex offenders. Finally, Korea is coming up with issues of punishing child sex offenders. They are generally jailed for four to seven years and get even lighter sentences if they were drunk during the incidents. However, in China, people who are charged with raping children under 14 years old are sentenced to death without any exception. Also, child sex offenders in Britain are sentenced to life in prison regardless of the gravity of the offense and are even imprisoned for 10 years if they just make children see them having sexual relationships. In New Zealand, after being released from prison, those offenders are under police surveillance by GPS system for life and in Malaysia, they are imprisoned for the maximum of 60 years and get five lashes officially."

(unclear conclusion omitted but the content was phenomenal)

KU Girl Killed in Shuttle-bus Accident

Just a couple days ago a Korea University student, Kim Kyung Min, studying in her third year in the Sociology Department after transferring only this past March from Inha University, was killed on campus by a KU shuttle bus. Apparently, as the news came diffused down to me, she was texting with her cell phone and it also seems the shuttle bus driver was momentarily distacted, the combination of which created the unfortunate subsequents events of the girl being hit by the shuttle bus and being dragged behind. Apparently, it was the latter which killed her.


As white is the traditional color for mourning in Korea, on campus yesterday and today, a table to pay respects to the dead has been set up under a white tent near the well populated side entrance of the campus. Those passing the tent can pay their respects and commemorate her passing by bowing, lighting incense sticks from the perpetually burning white candles and lay another white chrysanthemum beside Kyung Min's framed smiling face while making wishes for her passage onward to the next life. The making of wishes is a Korean practice that seems fairly universal across religious disciplines in Korea, but even for those Christians who do not believe in the afterlife, paying silent respect to her and placing the white chrysanthemum is a symbolic gesture of both love and regret. The white chysanthemum is the flower which symbolizes lamentations and grief (or death) and is the funeral flower in Korea unlike the white lily in American society. Today sometime in the afternoon, the young lady's picture, I believe it is her high school graduation shot, was finally added to the white table. People wishing to sign her mourning "guest" book are welcomed, and the book will be passed on to her parents and single sibling to place with among the treasure and cherished memories which Kyung Min left behind.

Oriental Raisin Tree (헛개나무)

My friend, Yoon, and I have been doing cultural sharing on healing herbs and practices in our native countries. I'm fascinated with the oriental herbs and the huge herb markets displaying bursting bags and baskets of musty smelling barks and roots that the older generations oggle and haggle over. Wandering the herb markets is a delight for me, but I'm not satisfied with just the visual culture ... I want to KNOW the beliefs behind them!

On the 헛게나무 or Oriental Raisin Tree

The 헛개나무 is common to oriental medicine, referred to in Korea as 한의약 (Korean medicine), and so it is readily available in herb and open air markets and in the 5-day markets which specialize in medicinals. Probably the biggest reason for its popularity is due to the huge drinking culture in Korea. With so much indigestion, stomach upset and malaise from binge drinking, the boiled pulp and bark of the 헛개나무 ease hangovers and detox the liver. It is believed to be great for alcoholics and particularly helpful for treating the fatty liver.

To make the post-alcohol detox drink, add 50 grams of sliced 헛개나무 to 2 liters of water and bring to a boil. Once it begins to boil, turn the heat down and simmer the liquid for 2 hours with the lid opened or removed (for releasing toxins). After the liquid has been simmered for 2 hours, it is ready to drink. Though drinking it hot or cold effects the body the same, most people prefer to drink the liquid chilled and as if it were water, that is, throughout the day. There doesn't seem to be any limit on how much a person can consume in a day but my gut feeling parallels the cliche "too much of a good thing" isn't good. The woody plant can be boiled several times for extracting the healing properties, but 2 or 3 times at the very least.

The 헛개나무 is also believed to be great for releasing stress, lowering high blood pressure, counteracting jaundice, constipation and diabetes. As already said, it is great for the hangover and upset stomach so marketing, to exploit this belief, has happily created a 헛개나무 yogurt. Older people also use it when boiling meat in order to "clean up" the meat and remove bad tastes and toxins. Even the fruit of the 헛개나무 has its purpose -- it is used in Oriental medicine, particularly when doing acupunture (although Yoon wasn't certain exactly how).



The web is filled with places to purchase 헛개나무, the fruit, the bark (pictured above), the leaf. Of course it's available through GMarket -- hey, what isn't?! But because of its popularity in the Korean culture, there is even a market that specializes in the woody plant: http://hutgenamu.com. This site markets the domesticated plant substances, the really wild plant substances -- 헛개나무 껍질, the skin/bark of the tree, which is marketed at ￦50,000/kg -- and even the 헛개나무 얼매 or fruit of the tree, which sells at ￦130,000/60 fruit juice packets.