Tag Archives: korea

Korean military folk food: ppogeuri

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Ppogeuri (뽀글이) is a slang name for instant ramen that Korean soldiers often eat. The food has to be eaten at a specific time, and that is late night after a soldier comes back from night watch. What makes ppogeuri different from regular instant ramen is that because cup noodles weren’t available during the time my informant was a soldier, they had to use the plastic packaging the instant noodles came in as the cooking pot and plate. With no kettle and hot water only being available during shower times, you would have use cold water and put the packaging near a radiator to actually boil and cook it. With Korean culture’s emphasis on age and the strict environment Korean soldiers train in, my informant talked about how only sergeants were allowed to secretly make this dish after night watch. The only time he ate ppogeuri as a lower-ranked personnel was when he was a private and one of his superiors allowed him to have a bite, which he described that first bite as heavenly.

Context

The informant is a 51 year man born and raised in South Korea. As a South Korean male, he was required to serve in the military, and he served in the Korean army from October 1994~ December 1996 after his freshman year in college. This topic came up when we were talking about military food, when I told him about my worries for food quality at my military training center for ROTC. He first saw this folk food when he was coming back from his first night watch as a private, when one of the superiors he was standing watch with cooked ppogeuri as a late night snack. Even after his discharge, he said he tried cooking instant noodles the same way but said the noodles tasted raw and the soup was chalky. His interpretation of this dish is that it can only be enjoyed by people who went through the same military experience – during his service, when barracks were old, cramped, and soldiers often trained hungry, soldiers could at least count on ppogeuri to fill their stomachs after a grueling shift of night watch.

Analysis

Based on what I learned, my takeaway from this folklore is that ppogeuri is a vernacular folk dish that can only exist under specific, strict constraints. To start, its preparation method was created due to the lack of cooking tools on base, and can only be eaten by superior ranks while lower ranks can only hungrily watch or stand lookout. In this way, ppogeuri symbolizes the hierarchal nature of militaries, where even simple acts like cooking ramen is denied. However, just like my informant’s first experience with the dish, when a lower-ranked personnel is allowed a bite, this goes beyond an act of kindness – it creates an unforgettable moment of bond as one individual directly contradicts the system he’s supposed to blindly follow for a fellow soldier. Finally, the timing of when one eats ppogeuri, which is after a long night of watch, reflects the shared struggle a folk group (soldiers in this case) go through. As such, it may not even be a stretch to say that one way to identify membership within the folk group of Korean soldiers is if one has ever ate and enjoyed ppogeuri under these same conditions. All in all, ppogeuri is a reminder of how folk dishes can be crafted from creativity that is developed to get around constraints. At an individual level, I believe ppogeuri holds a great personal value for former Korean veterans, as it is a dish that symbolizes the strict system they adapted to during their youth, while being a source of comfort and nostalgia they can look back on.

Ungnyeo

Text:

A long time ago, a bear and a tiger wished to become human. They prayed fervently, and the god Hwanung decided to fulfill their wish. He gave them each many cloves of garlic and mugwort, and told them to eat these everyday while staying out of the sun for 100 days, then they will turn human. At first, the tiger and bear obediently ate the garlic and mugwort daily, and stayed in a dark cave, but soon the tiger became frustrated and gave up, leaving the cave. However, the bear persisted, and after a 100 days, she turned into a woman named Ungnyeo. She then prayed to Hwanung to become a mother, and her wish was granted–she gave birth to a son named Tangun, who became the first king of the first Korean kingdom, Gojoseon.

Context:

The informant heard this story from their parents, but because it is a creation myth and widely known, they’ve heard it multiple times from multiple people over the years.

Analysis:

This creation story follows the trend among many cultures of giving their rulers a sense of divinity, whether they’re a descendant of the gods, or chosen by. one, or actually a deity. This myth highlights key Confucian and cultural virtues such as patience, endurance, humility, and devotion. The bear’s perseverance is celebrated, positioning these qualities as foundational to Korean identity and societal ideals. There is a huge spiritual meaning behind this myth: the divine connection between the heavens(the god) and the earth(the bear) results in a ruler that symbolizes harmony and is the literal union of the divine and the earthly. It also subtly elevates maternal strength and the feminine role in nation-building, as the bear-woman becomes the literal mother of the Korean people.

Korean Fan Death

“So, growing up in a Korean household, I’d heard a lot about the dangers of leaving a fan on overnight. My grandparents, and to a lesser extent, my parents told me to turn off electric fans or to open a door/window before falling asleep. I think they believed that keeping the fan on in a closed room would somehow suck all of the air out of the room and suffocate you, as if the fan were a living creature.

I wasn’t sure where this started, but I’d heard about it stemming from wartime efforts where the government tried to limit electricity usage by convincing people to turn the fans off, something similar to how in England during WW1 they tried to get people to eat more carrots for vision or something.
You know sometimes it happens on the news, like every year they’ll report on it, but it usually turns out that each case actually has a different underlying reason, like natural causes or something. But asked my dad if this happened back in his day and he does remember this one case when he was a child, where they said that there was a bunch of people who died with electric fans on during a heatwave in the 1990’s, and they had a doctor say that “this type of death occurs when one is exposed to electric fan breezes for long hours in a sealed area, and . excessive exposure to such a condition lowers one’s temperature and hampers blood circulation, [leading] to the paralysis of heart and lungs.” I’m not a doctor, but I think it might’ve just been due to the heatwave at the time.”

Context:
This was an in-person interview with a friend of mine who told me about his experiences with this myth/legend from his culture. The text was taken from and recorded during our conversation.


Interpretation: This shows how, even though it’s scientifically disproven, a belief can persist in a culture by being passed down through each generation by word of mouth. The significance lies in its power of superstition as well as how it reflects culturally specific fears.

Korean saying: Green Bean Seeds, Red Bean Seeds

Nationality: Korean
Primary Language: Korean
Age: 50
Occupation: Country Branch Manager
Residence: Seoul, South Korea
Performance Date: 16 February 2024

Tags: green beans, red beans, seeds, agriculture, South Korea, proverb, saying, result

Text:

“콩심은데 콩나고, 팥심은데 팥난다.”

Literal: “You get green beans where you plant green bean seeds and you get red beans where you plan red bean seeds.”

Meaning: ‘Every result has its own reason.’

Context:

R is a born and raised South Korean. This is one of the sayings R taught me when growing up in Korea, along with a plethora of other proverbs and lessons. Apparently he had heard it from his father before him and so on, and it’s a pretty common Korean saying. R once said this to me when I forgot to bring my coat out one chilly winter afternoon and came down with a cold a few days later.

Analysis:

The English saying “You reap what you sow” might be a variant of this saying, as both are about agriculture and acquiring the direct result of your actions. Perhaps the cultural differences influence the way the saying is said (with Koreans using beans in many dishes and Western cultures liking simple, easy-to-say proverbs), while the meaning behind the sayings are shared worldwide.

Red Ginseng and Deer Antler

CONTEXT: HL is a second year student at USC, originally from Maryland. HL learned this practice from her grandparents, who she lived with until moving to Los Angeles. HL’s grandparents are both from Korea, which is where they learned this practice. HL’s relationship with this is that she does not believe it had any effect on her health and strength, but appreciates that her grandparents wanted that for her.

TEXT:

HL: So for some reason – in Korean culture – my grandparents would always have one of their siblings visit Korea and come back, and when they came back the would bring this syrup/juice thing that was made up of crushed up deer bones or some kind of big animal. It was the most bitter disgusting thing I had ever eaten in my entire life and I always knew when they opened the big red box that it was in there. So then I would have to drink this pouch of the crushed up bone juice, and they were like, “oh its so that you grow up to be healthy and strong” and stuff. So it’s a common East Asian herbal medicine thing. Yeah that was a tradition I grew up with. It would happen once or twice a year – whenever someone would go to Korea on vacation and come back. Probably from when I was about four to when I was ten. They prioritize it more for kids, and you can find these boxes with the pouches in HMART, like here I’ve seen them. They’re hidden away in a special area on a special shelf near the alcohol section. They’re like 100 or 200 dollars for a box of these pouches. I thought it was bullshit but I did it because they forced me too, or sometimes if I did it they would give me money. To specify, the pouches were actually red ginseng, other root things, and deer antlers, but I swear my grandpa told me it was bones.

ANALYSIS: This is an example of folk medicine, also related to life cycle, as it is primarily given to children. Red ginseng is native to Korea, as are deer, so both could be part of folk traditions going back many years. I do not know of the health benefits of either, but as with other folk medicine there could be medical benefits derived from them. HL said the mixture did not taste good, which can invoke a feeling that if it doesn’t taste good, but someone is drinking it anyway, then it must have some other benefit, such as health. It is a marker of life cycle, as HL said that this is mostly only done until 18. This folk medicine practice also serves as a way of passing down family practices and cultural heritage related to being Korean, as HL’s grandparents insisted she participate, which connects her to something they learned while growing up in Korea, while she was growing up in the US.