Sea urchin (seonggye)

Seonggye is the general name for the sea urchins, echinoderms related to starfish and sea cucumbers. What Koreans eat is not the shell but the gonads, the soft yellow-orange lobes inside, usually called the roe. Around 30 species live in Korean waters, and the purple sea urchin is by far the most commonly harvested. Older Korean called them bamsongi-jogae, "chestnut-burr shellfish," for the way the spines bristle like a chestnut husk; on Jeju they are gusal or seomge. Jeong Yak-jeon's early-19th-century Jasan eobo described the purple urchin's roe as yellow and like unset tallow, sweet in taste, and eaten raw or in soup, which is still how it is eaten.

On Jeju, urchins belong to the haenyeo, the island's women free-divers. According to the Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture, the purple-urchin harvest picks up as the May agar-weed season winds down and peaks in June. Divers pry the animals out of rock crevices with a small hooked tool, and a five-hour dive can yield 30–40 kg of urchins. Then comes a second shift of about the same length at the divers' work shed, splitting each shell with a small knife, spooning out the roe and straining away bits of gut; only about a tenth of the catch by weight ends up as roe. Urchins are also a significant fishery on the east coast, where purple urchins are abundant.

Fresh roe is eaten straight from the shell, wrapped in raw miyeok, or mixed into rice, and it is salted into a short-keeping jeotgal eaten within a few days. Its most famous Jeju form is seonggye-guk, roe simmered with miyeok in a large pot: a local cousin of miyeok-guk traditionally served at feasts. The folk encyclopedia notes that families planning a wedding outside urchin season would buy roe in summer and freeze it, so the soup could still be served to guests. A rice porridge finished with urchin is cooked for children.

• Protein and minerals: Raw urchin roe supplies about 15.8 g of protein per 100 g in the Korean table, along with 4 mg of iron and 490 mg of potassium; a typical portion is much smaller than 100 g.
• Traditionally valued: Jeju tradition treats urchin as a restorative food, including for new mothers; these are folk beliefs, not established medical effects.
• Raw seafood: Urchin is normally eaten raw. The FDA advises pregnant women, young children, older adults and people with weakened immunity to avoid raw or undercooked seafood.
• Allergies: Sea urchins are echinoderms, not fish, crustaceans or mollusks, and are not among the nine U.S. major food allergens; anyone with seafood allergies who reacts to them should seek an allergist's advice.
• Salted roe: Urchin jeotgal is preserved with salt, so it is a much saltier food than fresh roe.