Jinju

Jinju sits on the Nam River in western South Gyeongsang, a former provincial capital with a fertile hinterland. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes a city whose farmland turns out rice, Jinju pears, sweet persimmons and a long list of greenhouse vegetables, and which still keeps several traditional five-day markets. Its food fame rests on two dishes: Jinju bibimbap and Jinju naengmyeon. For the wider region, see Gyeongsang.

Jinju bibimbap

Jinju was the bibimbap city before Jeonju took the title. The Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture cites a 1925 article in the magazine Gaebyeok that chose Jinju bibimbap to represent Gyeongsang Province, and a 1929 issue of Byeolgeongon that praised it among Korea's regional specialties, describing white rice ringed with green vegetables, bracken and yellow mung bean sprouts, broth, slices of mung bean jelly, finely cut beef tartare and a little gochujang. The magazine priced a bowl at 10 jeon. That description, the encyclopedia notes, is close to the dish served today.

The encyclopedia picks out three features that set it apart from earlier bibimbap. It used raw beef (yukhoe) where older recipes used meatballs or griddled meat, which the author links to Jinju's large cattle market and the ready supply of fresh beef. It was seasoned with gochujang, when ancestral-rite bibimbap was usually mixed with soy sauce. And it arrived unmixed, with toppings arranged over the rice, which suggests it was already a restaurant dish rather than market food stirred in a big tub. A story ties the dish to the Imjin War siege of Jinju Castle, but the encyclopedia says it survives only in oral tradition and cannot be verified; treat it as legend.

The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, drawing on a 1984 government survey of regional food, gives the details. Each namul is kneaded until a milky liquid seeps between the fingers: soybean sprouts sautéed with sesame oil and broth, mung bean sprouts and crown daisy blanched and dressed, radish fried in soy sauce until reddish, bracken, and toasted laver. Over the rice go the namul, beef tartare, strips of mung bean jelly (making muk), a spoonful of a special yeot-gochujang, and botangguk: clams minced fine, sautéed in sesame oil and simmered briefly in a little water. The folk encyclopedia spells it potangguk. Alongside comes a hearty soup of brisket, lung, tripe, radish and coagulated blood.

The encyclopedia connects all bibimbap to the meal shared after ancestral rites (jesa food) and records that Jinju restaurants once sold it late at night as heotjesatbap, "mock ritual rice," because night owls ate at the hour families ate after a rite. The same nickname is better known today in Andong.

Jinju naengmyeon

Jinju's cold noodles take a different route from northern mul-naengmyeon. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture traces them to buckwheat grown in the mountains around Jirisan, in Hapcheon and Hamyang, and to a local taste for seafood broths. The noodles were once pure buckwheat; today sweet potato or mung bean starch is mixed in. The broth draws on dried anchovies and other small fish, mussels, clams and dried pollack, often blended with beef broth, and is seasoned with soup soy sauce aged two years or more (making yuksu broth). The signature topping is beef yukjeon, sliced egg-battered beef, with kimchi, egg strips, pear and threads of chili. A postwar restaurant in the central market was said to plunge red-hot iron into the broth to drive off fishy notes.

According to local testimony gathered by the Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture, Jinju naengmyeon flourished in the colonial era around the city's gwonbeon, the guild of professional entertainers, and was an upper-class dish that cost as much as six doe of rice. A North Korean reference work of 1994 ranks it with Pyongyang naengmyeon as the best of all. After the Korean War it held on in the central market until a fire in 1966 destroyed the market and, both encyclopedias say, ended the tradition. The version served today was reconstructed from the memories of former restaurant staff and elders for a local broadcaster's documentary, and spread after the naengmyeon boom of the 2000s, so think of it as a careful revival. See noodles in Korean history.