Gaeseong

Gaeseong (also spelled Kaesong) lies just north of the Demilitarized Zone and is today a city of North Korea. For almost five centuries it was the capital of the Goryeo dynasty, from 919 according to the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture until the Joseon court moved to Hanyang (Seoul) in the 1390s. Long afterward, Korean food writers continued to treat Gaeseong cooking as one of the most refined traditions on the peninsula. This page describes Gaeseong food as recorded in Korean reference works; for the broader historical context see Seoul & Gyeonggi, whose food tradition the encyclopedia treats as including Gaeseong, and the northern provinces.

A conservative, elaborate table

The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture ranks Gaeseong alongside Seoul and Jeonju as the most lavish of Korean regional cuisines, and describes it as notably conservative, faithfully keeping dishes handed down from Goryeo. Gaeseong was not known for any one abundant product, but grains and vegetables of many kinds were available, as they were across Gyeonggi. What set Gaeseong apart was the care lavished on preparation, for instance in shaping rice cakes and dumplings.

Wealth helped. Gaeseong's merchants, the Songsang, were among the most famous traders of Joseon, and the encyclopedia describes how they controlled much of the ginseng trade with China and Japan from the seventeenth century onward. The city remains closely associated with ginseng.

Joraengi-tteokguk

Rice-cake soup is eaten across Korea at the Lunar New Year, normally made with long cylinders of rice cake sliced on the diagonal. Gaeseong's joraengi-tteokguk is different: the rice-cake rope is pinched with a bamboo knife into small, cocoon-shaped pieces with a waist in the middle. The soup is made with broth from beef bones and brisket, seasoned with soup soy sauce, and topped with shredded seasoned brisket and egg garnish.

A well-known story explains the shape. In his book Joseon yorihak, quoted by the encyclopedia, the writer Hong Seon-pyo says that Gaeseong people, still loyal to Goryeo after the Joseon dynasty was founded, twisted the rice cake as if wringing the new dynasty's neck. The encyclopedia presents this as a traditional explanation rather than documented history.

Pyeonsu

Pyeonsu are summer dumplings filled not with the heavier winter fillings but with beef, cucumber, squash, mushrooms, egg and pine nuts. They are boiled and eaten with vinegared soy sauce or floated in chilled beef broth, a cold-dumpling taste that the encyclopedia compares with the love of naengmyeon. Sources differ on the shape: the encyclopedia's entry on pyeonsu describes square dumplings, while its survey of regional foods says Gaeseong cooks folded them round, like a hat, unlike Seoul's square ones.

Bossam-kimchi

Gaeseong's most celebrated kimchi is a wrapped one. The local cabbage, prized for tender, long, nutty leaves, was salted; then the ribs were cut into pieces and stood upright on whole leaves, layered with radish, apple, pear, chestnuts, jujubes (daechu), pine nuts, minari, garlic, ginger and saeujeot, and the leaves were folded over like a cloth bundle. The encyclopedia notes that people in Gaeseong avoided the word bossam because of unpleasant associations and called it ssam-kimchi. Compare everyday baechu-kimchi and the mild baek-kimchi.

Sweets and rice cakes

Yakgwa, honey cookies of wheat flour, sesame oil, honey, ginger juice and rice wine, fried and soaked in syrup, are made throughout Korea. The encyclopedia names Gaeseong's mo-yakgwa, large, angular cut yakgwa, as a regional specialty, alongside Gaeseong gyeongdan (rice-cake balls). See tteok.

Gaeseong food today

Gaeseong has been out of reach for most South Koreans since the Korean War, so in the South its cooking is known mainly through cookbooks, reference works and families with roots in the city. Its signature dishes, especially joraengi-tteokguk and bossam-kimchi, remain part of the wider Korean repertoire.