When Koreans eat a steaming bowl of good soup, you hear after the first spoonful “ahhhhh” deep, guttural sounds somewhere between an exhalation and an exclamation. “Ahhh,” that’s the original chorus at our table: my husband starts, then my 2-year-old son, who noisily gulps down his soup, lets out his “ahhhhh” surprisingly deep for him.
The love of soup and broth is a major part of Korean culture. In Korea, soups mark important events and holidays.
When a baby is born, the young mother recharges her batteries with a mieokkuk, a nutritious seaweed soup. We also take it to celebrate birthdays. No wedding celebration without galbitangbeef rib soup, or janchi guksunoodle soup reserved for special occasions.
For the Lunar New Year we taste a dukguk, a soup with oval rice cakes that symbolize prosperity. For Chuseok, the Mid-Autumn Festival, it will be toranguktaro soup [un tubercule].
A Korean meal is incomplete without soup or stew, whether it’s for parties or everyday. A well-known saying goes: “A meal without soup is like a face without eyes.”
Variants for every region, every city
Aptly titled documentary series Broth Nation (“Broth Nation”) and aired on Netflix explores this passion for soup. […]
Korean soups are endlessly diverse, there are variations for every region, every city and every home.
More generally, they can be divided into four categories: hum, tang, jjigae and jeongnol. The hum is a liquid soup where there is more broth than other ingredients, e.g. mieokkuk and dukguk. Served in individual portions.
A word tang comes from Chinese 湯 [tang] and often denotes a soup whose broth simmers for hours, for example galbitang (beef ribs and radish soup)
The rest is reserved for subscribers…
- Access to all subscribed content
- Maintain independent writing
- Receive the mail alarm every morning
Our readers are also reading
Source of the article
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
Since April 2016, Hong Kong’s major English-language daily has been owned by Jack Ma (Ma Yun), the head of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. This acquisition raised strong fears that the newspaper’s candor and journalistic quality would be undermined or even disappear. Whatever, SCMP, remained in a situation of monopoly in the English-language daily newspaper market in the former British colony, remains essential for anyone who wants to follow China. The daily provides very complete factual tracking of China and Hong Kong news. The pages of the magazine sometimes provide good reporting on neighboring countries.
Jack Ma’s first initiative was to make the newspaper’s website free, with the intention of opening it up “the most comprehensive and reliable information site about Greater China for the rest of the world”. This strategy to capitalize on the reputation of the more than century-old title is in sync with Beijing’s efforts to develop its media network around the world.
Before that, it had already seen a significant editorial change under the leadership of Robert Kwok, a Chinese-Malaysian businessman close to Beijing who became a major shareholder in 1993.
Previous reference journal for “China Watchers”the newspaper gradually, after the arrival of Robert Kwok, got rid of a certain number of journalists, diluted its opinion pages and began to rely more and more on reports from the agency to process information that did not show Beijing in its best light.
After the 2000 ouster of Willy Wo-lap Lam, in charge of the China pages, whose analyzes of Beijing politics were deemed too independent, in 2002 it was the turn of its Beijing bureau chief Jasper Becker to be licensed. Disappointing were the editorial pages where Hong Kong politicians exchanged a variety of opinions.
Read more
our services