Food in Modern Korea

The Korean table changed more between 1910 and 2010 than in the several centuries before. Colonial rule, war, scarcity, rapid industrialization and the move into high-rise apartments each left marks on what Koreans eat and how they store and cook it. Much of what now seems timeless, from daily white rice to the kimchi refrigerator, is a product of this century.

The colonial period (1910–1945)

Under Japanese rule, Korea was developed as a rice supplier for Japan. High-yielding Japanese rice varieties were spread through a model farm founded at Suwon in 1906, irrigation and chemical fertilizer raised harvests, and large mills owned by Japanese firms processed rice for export. In the war years after 1937, rice was requisitioned for the army, and many Koreans were issued Manchurian soybean cake in its place. A state campaign to save rice by mixing in other grains and flour began in this period and outlasted it.

Colonial law also reshaped drink and naming. Liquor-tax rules culminating in a 1935 tightening ended most home brewing, and Japanese-style sake took the name cheongju, while Korean clear liquor was classified separately as yakju; see traditional liquor. Printed cookbooks for a mass readership appeared, the best known being the 1924 Joseon musang sinsik yori jebeop, discussed in Joseon cookbooks.

War and its aftermath

The Korean War (1950–1953) and the hungry years after it produced dishes born of improvisation. The best known is budae-jjigae (부대찌개), "army base stew." In the 1960s in Uijeongbu, home to U.S. military bases, cooks combined ham, sausage and bacon obtained from the bases, at first literally leftovers, with kimchi, gochujang and broth. One street-stall cook, Heo Gi-suk, began serving it around 1960 and registered her restaurant in 1968, and a street of budae-jjigae restaurants grew up nearby. The stew was also nicknamed Johnson-tang, after U.S. President Lyndon Johnson.

Imported American surplus wheat, supplied as aid from 1956, changed staple eating. To ease the rice shortage, the government promoted honbunsik, mixing barley into rice and eating flour foods. From 1967 to 1976, restaurants were required by annual orders to mix at least 25 percent barley or noodles into the rice they served, "flour-food days" were designated, and teachers inspected schoolchildren's lunchboxes (see dosirak). From the mid-1960s, rice was barred from makgeolli and distilled soju too. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture credits the campaign with shifting the Korean staple from rice-and-barley to rice-and-wheat and with opening the way for bread and ramyeon.

Industrialization and convenience

Instant ramyeon was invented in Japan in the late 1950s, and Samyang Foods made the first Korean ramyeon in 1963. Initially it was expensive, so it was not yet the cheap filler later added to budae-jjigae, but production passed a billion packs a year by the mid-1970s, and cup noodles followed in the 1980s. The same decades brought factory-made jang: a 1968 Seoul campaign urged households to dismantle their jar platforms and buy commercial soy sauce, doenjang and gochujang; see onggi.

Rice scarcity finally ended in the 1970s with the Tongil rice varieties, developed in the late 1960s by crossing indica and japonica rice. The country became self-sufficient in rice, and white rice at every meal became normal for most families for the first time; see rice in Korean culture. Within a generation the problem had reversed into surplus, as consumption began a long decline.

Apartments and the kimchi refrigerator

As more families moved into apartment blocks, they lost the backyard where jars were buried for kimjang. Goldstar marketed a kimchi refrigerator as early as 1984, but it failed while most people still lived in houses with yards. On November 20, 1995, the appliance maker Mando (later Winia) launched the Dimchae, a top-loading refrigerator designed to hold kimchi at a steady, cold fermenting temperature. It sold about 4,000 units in its first year and some 530,000 by 1999, and the kimchi refrigerator is now a standard Korean appliance. Shelf-stable cooked rice later extended the same convenience to the rice bowl.

Hansik goes global

As Korea grew wealthier, the government began to treat Korean cuisine, hansik, as part of its cultural profile abroad. The Korean Food Foundation was established in 2010 to research and promote Korean food at home and overseas, and was renamed the Korean Food Promotion Institute in 2017; a Korean Food Promotion Act followed in 2019. UNESCO's inscription of kimjang in 2013 and later the international reach of Korean films, dramas and music helped carry kimchi, bibimbap, fried chicken and street foods such as tteokbokki into restaurants and supermarkets worldwide.

Continuity amid change

For all that changed, the basic structure of the meal held. A convenience-store dosirak or a family dinner in a high-rise still pairs rice with soup and a range of banchan. The twentieth century changed the ingredients, the containers and the kitchen; it did not change the idea that rice tastes best with many small dishes around it.