In South Korea, a soup and in bed
When Koreans eat a steaming bowl of good soup, you hear after the first spoonful of “aaaaaah” deep, guttural sounds somewhere between exhalation and exclamation. “Aaaaaah”, such is the original chorus that resounds at our table: it is my husband who begins, then my 2-year-old son, who noisily swallows his soup, launches his “aaaaaah” to him surprisingly deep.
The love of soup and broth is a fundamental part of Korean culture. In Korea, soups mark important events and feast days.
When a baby is born, the young mother recharges her batteries with a miyeokguk, a nourishing seaweed soup. We also take it to celebrate birthdays. There is no wedding party without galbitangbeef rib soup, or janchi guksua noodle soup reserved for special occasions.
For the Lunar New Year, we taste a dukguk, a soup with oval rice cakes that symbolize prosperity. For Chuseok, the Mid-Autumn Festival, it will be toranguktaro soup [un tubercule].
A Korean meal is incomplete without a soup or stew, whether it’s for parties or for every day. A well-known adage says: “A meal without soup is like a face without eyes.”
Variants for each region, each city
Aptly titled documentary series A Nation of Broth (“A nation of broths”) and broadcast on Netflix explores this passion for soup. […]
Korean soups are of endless variety, there are variations for every region, every city and every home.
More generally, they can be divided into four categories: guk, tang, jjigae and jeongnol. The guk is a liquid soup, where there is more broth than other ingredients, e.g. miyeokguk and dukguk. It is served in individual portions.
Word tang comes from Chinese 湯 [tang] and often designates a soup whose broth simmers for hours, for example the galbitang (beef rib and radish soup)
The rest is reserved for subscribers…
- Access all subscribed content
- Support independent writing
- Receive the Mail Alarm Clock every morning
Our readers also read
Source of the article
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
Since April 2016, Hong Kong’s major English-language daily has been owned by Jack Ma (Ma Yun), boss of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. This acquisition aroused strong fears that the newspaper’s outspokenness and journalistic quality would be eroded or even disappear. Anyway, the SCMP, remained in a situation of monopoly on the market of English-language dailies in the former British colony, remains essential to whoever wants to follow China. The daily provides a very complete factual follow-up of Chinese and Hong Kong news. The magazine pages sometimes provide good reports on neighboring countries.
Jack Ma’s first initiative was to make the newspaper’s website free, with the intention of opening “the most comprehensive and reliable information site on Greater China to the rest of the world”. This strategy of capitalizing on the reputation of the more than century-old title is in line with the efforts made by Beijing to develop its media network in the world.
Previously, a significant editorial shift had already been observed under the leadership of Robert Kuok, a Sino-Malaysian businessman close to Beijing who became the main shareholder in 1993.
Formerly a reference journal for “China Watchers”the newspaper had gradually, after the arrival of Robert Kuok, got rid of a certain number of journalists, it had watered down its opinion pages and had begun to rely more and more on dispatches from agency to process information that does not show Beijing in its best light.
After the ousting of Willy Wo-lap Lam, in charge of the China pages, in 2000, whose analyzes of Beijing politics were considered too independent, it was in 2002 the turn of the head of his Beijing bureau, Jasper Becker, to be licensed. The editorial pages, where the figures of Hong Kong politics used to exchange the most diverse opinions, became disappointing.
Read more
Our services
