한국국제교류재단

- Arrival in South Korea and Dakgalbi

Food is more than just sustenance or variations in tastes and smells. Rather, food is also caught up in how we inhabit the world, in our experiences and memories of a place, and the sociabilities we generate with others therein. This is particularly the case as we move between places, whether to our favourite restaurant or across the world to encounter new sights and sounds, but also crucially smells, tastes, and touches.
 It is in this light that I reflect on the sensations, memories, and meanings caught up in one early experiences of consuming Korean food. My first visit to South Korea began on April 23, 2002. As a recent graduate from university in New Zealand, I joined the tens of thousands of other young Westerners who come to South Korea every year to teach English. I had travelled some 16 hours via Singapore to reach Seoul and arrived early in the morning. My first day was a daze, I was jet-lagged, disoriented, and did not really know what was going on or where exactly I was, a classic condition of the recently arrived.
 It was however in the evening of that day that one of my more adventurous new colleagues came to my apartment and said, “Let’s go for dinner, I have something you have to try!”. Imagine a large iron skillet placed in the middle of a round table, heated to just the right temperature. Then comes the food: bright red sauce, chicken, rice cakes, sweet potatoes, cabbage, and topped off with sesame leaves, sizzling the moment they touch the skillet’s surface and quickly generating intensive aromas that radiate a flavoursome and spicy mixture.

 The smell itself made my mouth water but also made me wonder how hot this dish would be. The first taste blew me away, intensive in flavour yet with the rice cake and chicken also delicate in texture. Of course, my colleagues insisted that the dish be accompanied by soju because, “It makes it less spicy”. Another sensation!
 This time potent and all encompassing – it was strong but not unpleasant to drink. As we gradually ate more and more of the dish my colleague suddenly told me, we’ve got to stop now and get some rice. I just followed what I was told and soon the final course was here, rice with seaweed making the dish last longer but also giving me one last taste, the subtle but distinctive seaweed that worked its way through the still spicy dish.
 There are, of course, hundreds if not thousands of Korean dishes, and many would be more traditional or quintessential of Korean cuisine than dakgalbi, a speciality from Chuncheon in Gangwon region that appeared inthe late 1960s. Yet, my memory of arrival in South Korea will always be caught up in this first eating experience. This was an experience that not only exposed me to new sensations but also provided an entry point into everyday eating out in South Korea; dakgalbi was of course very popular in the early 2000s. Moreover, this introduction to food was also about sociability, and getting to know my colleagues. Most importantly, this sensational experience was about orienting myself to life in Korea, regrounding after migration, and finding new and thoroughly sensational ways of living abroad.

KF Field Research Fellow Senior Lecturer
University of Auckland, New Zealand
Francis L. Collins