Tongyeong

Tongyeong sits at the tip of a peninsula on the South Gyeongsang coast, surrounded on three sides by the island-studded South Sea. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture counts some 570 islands within the city's boundaries. It is a town shaped by the sea in every sense: a naval headquarters for nearly three centuries, a major fishing and aquaculture center today, and the home of a handful of foods that have spread across the country. For the province, see Gyeongsang.

A naval town with two names

The name recalls Tongjeyeong, the Joseon naval command, which the encyclopedia says was moved here in 1604, turning a small inlet into a military base. The commander's legacy is still everywhere, especially that of Admiral Yi Sun-sin, the hero of the Imjin War. When the town became a city in 1955 it was renamed Chungmu, after Yi's posthumous title; in 1995 Chungmu City and Tongyeong County merged as Tongyeong City. That is why the city's most famous dish still carries the older name.

Oysters

Tongyeong is Korea's oyster capital. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture says the waters off Tongyeong produce about 30 percent of the country's farmed oysters (gul), and that the city holds an annual oyster festival. Hanging-culture farming, in which oysters grow on lines suspended from rafts or long ropes, matured in the 1970s and developed fastest along the south coast centered on Chungmu. Oysters are eaten raw, cooked into rice, porridge, soup and jeon, and salted as jeotgal, including the chili-seasoned eoriguljeot.

The encyclopedia lists anchovies (myeolchi), oysters and pearl oysters as Tongyeong's best-known catches, and adds that sea squirt (meongge) farming began in Korea in Tongyeong's waters in the 1970s. Mackerel, sea bream and rockfish round out a long list of local fish.

Chungmu gimbap

Chungmu gimbap is the opposite of the fat, filled rolls sold elsewhere: thin, finger-sized rolls of rice wrapped in laver with nothing inside, served with spicy seasoned squid (ojingeo) and chunky radish kimchi, either kkakdugi or larger-cut seokbakji. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture regards it as a post-liberation dish and records two oral explanations. In one, fishermen who could not stop for proper meals packed gimbap to sea, but in summer the fillings spoiled, so they rolled the rice plain and carried the side dishes separately. In the other, vendors sold it to ferry passengers at the old Tongyeong terminal, a hub for boats to nearby islands and Busan; it was nicknamed baenmeori gimbap, "ship's-bow gimbap." Both stories share the same logic: keeping rice and banchan apart so the meal would last in summer heat without refrigeration.

The encyclopedia says the sheets of laver are cut into six, the squid is blanched and dressed with chili flakes, soy sauce, garlic, green onion, sesame, sugar and sesame oil, and the radish is salted and seasoned with jeotgal and chili. A bowl of radish-greens soup often comes alongside, and baby octopus or fish cake sometimes replaces the squid. Once a cheap, heaping laborer's meal, it became nationally known after it was featured at the Gukpung 81 festival in Seoul in 1981. See gimbap and ojingeochae-muchim for related dishes.

Kkulppang

Kkulppang, "honey bread," is Tongyeong's sweet snack: a ball of wheat dough filled with sweet red bean paste, deep-fried, then coated in a sticky sweet glaze. The Korea Tourism Organization describes it as a snack made to keep well in Tongyeong's warm climate and credits Omisa, a shop that began in the 1960s, as the original. Its Korean-language page on Omisa says the founder had worked as a pastry maker at a well-known local bakery before he started selling doughnuts and kkulppang from a street stall in the early 1960s. Today a whole kkulppang street lines the harbor.

Markets by the harbor

Tongyeong Jungang Market, beside the Gangguan harbor where replica turtle ships are moored, is the place to see all of this together. The Korea Tourism Organization describes a market with nearly 400 years of history, dominated by fresh and dried fish, alongside rice cakes, local produce and mother-of-pearl crafts. The hillside mural village of Dongpirang rises directly behind it. For the wider culture of these markets, see traditional markets.