Corea: The Hermit Nation

by William Elliot Griffis

The staple diet has in it much more of meat and fat than that of the Japanese. The latter acknowledge that the average Corean can eat twice as much as himself. Beef, pork, fowls, venison, fish, and game are consumed without much waste in rejected material. Nearly everything edible about an animal is a tidbit, and a curious piece of cookery, symbolical of a generous feast, is often found at the board of a liberal host. This tang-talk (which often becomes the “town-talk”) is a chicken baked and served with its feathers, head, claws, and inwards intact. “To treat to an entire fowl” is said of a liberal host, and is equivalent to “killing the fatted calf.”

Fish are often eaten raw from tail to head, especially if small, with only a little seasoning. Ho-hoi, or fish-bone salad, is a delicacy. Dog-flesh is on sale among the common butchers’ meats, and the Coreans enjoy it as our Indians do. In the first month of the year, however, owing to religious scruples, no dog-meat is eaten, or dishes of canine origin permitted. [[268]]

The state dinner, given to the Japanese after the treaty, consisted of this bill of fare: two-inch squares of pastry, made of flour, sugar, and oil; heaps of boiled eggs; pudding made of flour, sesame, and honey; dried persimmons; “pine-seeds,” honey-like food covered with roasted rice colored red and white; macaroni soup with fowl; boiled legs of pork, and wine, rice or millet spirit with everything. It is customary to decorate the tables on grand occasions with artificial flowers, and often the first course is intended more for show than for actual eating. For instance, when the Japanese party, feasted at Seoul in 1646, first sat down to the table, one of them began to help himself to fish, of which he was very fond. The dish seemed to contain a genuine cooked carp basted with sauce, but, to the embarrassment of the hungry guest, the fish would not move. He was relieved by the servant, who told him that it was put on the table only for show. The courses brought on later contained more substantial nourishment, such as fish, flesh, fowl, vegetables, soups, cakes, puddings and tea. Judging from certain words in the language, these show-dishes form a regular feature at the opening of banquets. The women cook rice beautifully, making it thoroughly soft by steaming, while yet retaining the perfect shape of each grain by itself. Other well-known dishes are barley, millet, beans, taro (potato cooked in a variety of ways), lily-bulbs, sea-weeds, acorns, dai-kon (radishes), turnips, and potatoes. Macaroni and vermicelli are used for soups and refreshing lunches. Apples, pears, plums, grapes, persimmons, and various kinds of berries help to furnish the table, though the flavor of these is inferior to the same fruits grown in our gardens.

All kinds of condiments, mustard, vinegar, pepper, and a variety of home-made sauces, are much relished. Itinerant food-sellers are not so common as in China, but butcher-shops and vermicelli stands are numerous. Two solid meals, with a light breakfast, is the rule. Opan, or midday rice, is the dinner. Tai-sik is a regular meal. The appearance of the evening star is the signal for a hearty supper, and the planet a synonym for the last meal of the day. At wakes or funeral feasts, and on festal days, the amount of victuals consumed is enormous, while a very palatable way of remembering the dead is by the yum-pok, or drinking of sacrificial wine. The Coreans understand the preservative virtues of ice, and in winter large quantities of this substance are cut and stored away for use in the summer, in keeping fresh meat and fish. Their ice-houses are made by excavating the ground [[269]]and covering over the store with earth and sod, from which in hot weather they use as may be necessary. These ice stores are often under the direction of the government, especially when large quantities of fish are being preserved for rations of the army in time of war. Those who oversee the work are called “Officers of the Refrigerator.”

One striking fault of the Coreans at the table is their voracity, and to this trait of their character Japanese, French, Dutch, and Chinese bear witness. It might be supposed that a Frenchman, who eats lightly, might make a criticism where an Englishman would be silent; but not so. All reports concerning them seem to agree. In this respect there is not the least difference between the rich and poor, noble or plebeian. To eat much is an honor, and the merit of a feast consists not in the quality but in the quantity of the food served. Little talking is done while eating, for each sentence might lose a mouthful. Hence, since a capacious stomach is a high accomplishment, it is the aim from infancy to develop a belly having all possible elasticity. Often the mothers take their babies upon their knees, and after stuffing them with rice, like a wad in a gun, will tap them from time to time with the paddle of a ladle on the stomach, to see that it is fully spread out or rammed home, and only cease gorging when it is physically impossible for the child to swell up more. A Corean is always ready to eat; he attacks whatever he meets with, and rarely says, “Enough.” Even between meals, he will help himself to any edible that is offered. The ordinary portion of a laborer is about a quart of rice, which when cooked makes a good bulk. This, however, is no serious hindrance to his devouring double or treble the quantity when he can get it. Eating matches are common. When an ox is slaughtered, and the beef is served up, a heaping bowl of the steaming mess does not alarm any guest. Dog-meat is a common article of food, and the canine sirloins served up in great trenchers are laid before the guests, each one having his own small table to himself. When fruits, such as peaches or small melons, are served, they are devoured without peeling. Twenty or thirty peaches is considered an ordinary allowance, which rapidly disappears. Such a prodigality in victuals is, however, not common, and for one feast there are many fastings. Beef is not an article of daily food with the peasantry. Its use is regulated by law, the butcher being a sort of government official; and only under extraordinary circumstances, [[270]]as when a grand festival is to be held, does the king allow an ox to be killed in each village. The Coreans are neither fastidious in their eating nor painstaking in their cooking. Nothing goes to waste. All is grist that comes to the mill in their mouths.

They equal Japanese in devouring raw fish, and uncooked food of all kinds is swallowed without a wry face. Even the intestines pass among them for delicate viands. Among the poorer classes, a cooked fish is rarely seen on the table; for no sooner is it caught than it is immediately opened and devoured. The raw viands are usually eaten with a strong seasoning of pepper or mustard, but they are often swallowed without condiment of any sort. Often in passing along the banks of a river, one may see men fishing with rod and line. Of these some are nobles who are not able, or who never wish to work for a living, yet they will fish for food and sport. Instead of a bag or basket to contain the game, or a needle to string it upon, each fisher has at his side a jar of diluted pepper, or a kind of soy. No sooner is a fish hooked, than he is drawn out, seized between the two fingers, dipped into the sauce, and eaten without ceremony. Bones do not scare them. These they eat, as they do the small bones of fowls.

Nationally, and individually, the Coreans are very deficient in conveniences for the toilet. Bath-tubs are rare, and except in the warmer days of summer, when the river and sea serve for immersion, the natives are not usually found under water. The Japanese in the treaty expedition in 1876 had to send bath-tubs on shore from their ships. Morning ablutions are made in a copper basin. The sponges which grow on the west coast seem to find no market at home. This neglect of more intimate acquaintance with water often makes the lowest classes “look like mulattos,” as Hamel said. Gutzlaff, Adams, and others, especially the Japanese, have noted this personal defect, and have suggested the need of soap and hot water. It may be that the contrast between costume and cuticle tempts to exaggeration. People who dress in white clothing have special need of personal cleanliness. Perhaps soap factories will come in the future.

The men are very proud of their beards, and the elders very particular in keeping them white and clean. The lords of creation honor their beard as the distinctive glory and mark of their sex. A man is in misery if he has only just enough beard to distinguish him from a woman. A full crop of hair on cheek and chin insures to its possessor unlimited admiration, while in Corean [[271]]billingsgate there are numerous terms of opprobrium for a short beard. Europeans are contemptuously termed “short-hairs”—with no suspicion of the use of the word in New York local politics. Old gentlemen keep a little bag in which they assiduously collect the combings of their hair, the strokings of their beard and parings of their nails, in order that all that belongs to them may be duly placed in their coffin at death.

The human hair crop is an important item in trade with China, to which country it is imported and sold to piece out the hair-tails which the Chinese, in obedience to their Manchiu conquerors, persist in wearing. Some of this hair comes from poor women, but the staple product is from the heads of boys who wear their hair parted in the middle, and plaited in a long braid, which hangs down their backs. At marriage, they cut this off, and bind what remains in a tight, round knot on the top of the scalp, using pins or not as they please.

The court pages and pretty boys who attend the magnates, usually rosy-cheeked, well fed, and effeminate looking youths, do not give any certain indication of their sex, and foreigners are often puzzled to know whether they are male or female. Their beardless faces and long hair are set down as belonging to women. Most navigators have made this mistake in gender, and when the first embassy from Seoul landed in Yokohama, the controversy, and perhaps the betting, as to the sex of these nondescripts was very lively. Captain Broughton declared that the whole duty of these pages seemed to be to smooth out the silk dresses of the grandees. Officials and nobles cover their top-knots with neat black nets of horse-hair or glazed thread. Often country and town people wear a fillet or white band of bark or leaves across the forehead to keep the loose hair in order, as the ancient Japanese used to do. Women coil their glossy black tresses into massive knots, and fasten them with pins or golden, silver, and brass rings. The heads of the pins are generally shaped like a dragon. They oil their hair, using a sort of vegetable pomatum. Among the court ladies and female musicians the styles of coiffure are various; some being very pretty, with loops, bands, waves, and “bangs,” as the illustration on page 161 shows.