'Have you eaten?' Inside Korea's gastronomic love language - 한국에서는 밥이 단순한 식

[정승남세기영어교육연구회장]

[WHY] 'Have you eaten?' Inside Korea's gastronomic love language

"밥 먹었습니까?" - 한국에서 밥이 갖는 의미

“The term bap [rice] is not a mere linguistic expression‎, but a centerpiece in understanding how Koreans think and their culture,”(한국에서는 밥이 단순한 식사의 의미가 아니라, 한국인의 생각하는 방식과 한국의 문화를 이해하는 핵심 내용이다.)

Saturday

January 20, 2024 The JoongAng Daily / 중앙일보

An image on a postcard made in Paris, France, of a Korean man sitting before a dining table with a huge rice bowl on it, during the late Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) in the 1890s. [JOONGANG PHOTO/JOO YOUNG-HA]

“Have you eaten yet?” a Korean friend likely asks you, right after a customary “Hi.” If your answer is affirmative, you can expect a nod of approval; if not, they will probably raise their eyebrows and say “aww,” with a follow-up question: “Why not?”

And if said friend doesn’t see you that often, there is a chance the conversation will end with, “Let’s have a meal together sometime.”

But Koreans, despite how they may come off in interactions like these, are not culinary detectives obsessed with other’s dietary status. “Have you eaten?” is more of a loose equivalent to “How are you?” rather than a genuine question or suggestion. While some say such pleasantries are remnants of the country’s long history of hardship during times of war and poverty, they also reflect the crucial position that meals, as well as the act of eating and sharing food, hold in its culture.

Maja Elisabeth von Bruun, a 29-year-old Finnish national living in Seoul, finds such greetings quite sweet.

“Whereas in Europe, you would usually ask things like ‘How have you been?’ or say ‘Let’s hang out sometime’ when speaking with your friends or acquaintances, the Korean variants of these phrases are a lot more food-focused,” noted von Bruun, who has been in the country for over six years.

“There have been times where my Korean friends have asked me ‘Have you eaten,’ and I’ve said no, and they have magically produced a snack from their bag and given it to me while telling me how important it is to eat well,” she said.

K-pop girl group Le Sserafim’s popular Japanese member Miyawaki Sakura, on the other hand, found the question quite perplexing at first.

“When someone asked me ‘Did you eat?’, I couldn’t really grasp the concept of this question at first,” Miyawaki said during a YouTube interview. The idol was confused as to whether a negative response would entail going out together to grab a meal.

“So I used to just say ‘yes, I have,’ even when I didn’t,” she admitted.

Koreans are also well aware of their seemingly peculiar attachment to food. Joking about “Korea's obsession with food” has become a meme on social media, even among young Koreans.

But that attitude is far from new — it dates back to proverbs that capture the importance of food, and of not skipping a meal.

For example, the classic “Aren't we all doing this [hard work] to stuff our stomach?” often implies that you should not skip a meal, even when you are too busy with work, or sacrifice what is fundamentally important in order to do something else that is comparatively insignificant. It can also be used to urge people to be more tolerant or have sympathy for others, or to smooth things out in a stressful situation.

Other examples include “Koreans are powered by rice,” “You shouldn’t bother even a dog when it’s eating a meal,” “You should be worth the rice/meal, at least” and plenty more.

But is such a cultural tendency really specific to Korea? Is food taken more seriously here than it is in other places in the world? Is gluttony a vice, or a virtue, that Koreans are uniquely wired for?

The Korea JoongAng Daily delved into such questions stacked upon the country’s dining table. After all, it is not about asking if you’ve had a bite — it’s about the whole buffet of delicate cultural nuance.

What does food signify in Korean culture?

“You are what you eat,” is true not only of Korea's dietary habits, but also of its culture. Food in Korea, as it is elsewhere in the world, is both a basic necessity for survival and an integral part of national identity.

“Koreans value food, and their staple food, rice, is closely affiliated with the concept of life and death,” wrote Seo Jin-Sook, a professor of Korean language and culture at Kyung Hee Cyber University, in a 2015 comparative study of food-related expressions.

“The term bap [rice] is not a mere linguistic expression‎, but a centerpiece in understanding how Koreans think and their culture,” Seo wrote.

Bap is arguably one of the most frequently used words in Koreans' daily conversation.

While the word, in a narrow sense, refers to steamed rice or similar cooked grains, it can also denote a full meal. Even when someone had a plate of pasta for lunch, the Italian dish can still be called a “bap.”

The word, therefore, is a testament to the constant presence a bowl of steamy rice on Korea's dining tables.

One well-known example in pop culture that captures the complex social context behind the word bap is a famous delivered line by actor Song Kang-ho — known for his leading role in “Parasite” (2019) — in the film “Memories of Murder” (2003).

Detective Park Doo-man, played by Song, asks the suspect in a murder case, “Are you eating well?” The line, which was translated into “Do you get up early in the morning, too?” carries a sarcastic undertone of “Are you even human?”

A scene from the film “Memories of Murder” (2003), in which detective Park Doo-man, played by actor Song Song Kang-ho, asks the suspect in a murder case “Are you eating well?” The line, which was translated into “Do you get up early in the morning, too?”, carries a sarcastic question of “Are you even a human?” in Korean. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Although sharing meals, or commensality, has been an important part of human interaction in every part of the world throughout humanity's history, food plays a particularly big role in Korean get-togethers.

“Ever since coming to Korea, I feel like most of my outings with my friends are always centered around food,” von Bruun said.

“In Finland, going out with my friends didn’t necessarily mean we would eat together, but in Korea, we plan every meeting around lunch or dinner, even if the ‘main point’ of our outing is something else, like watching a movie together,” she said.

The fact that Korea is where the now global mukbang trend originated speaks to its culinary culture as well.

The popularity of the mukbang, which is often translated as “eating show,” is interpreted by many to partly originate from Koreans’ traditional emphasis on eating together with family or friends, which is becoming a rarity in today’s increasingly fragmented society. By watching mukbangs, people can virtually enjoy the experience of dining together, and get secondhand satisfaction from watching others devour delicious food, without the hassle of actually connecting with other people.

Mukbang Youtuber Haetnim [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Are Koreans really food-obsessed?

Not necessarily.

But the answer may vary depending on the era and perspective. There are those who refer to gluttony as one of Korean people’s “biggest shortcomings.”

In 2022, an average Korean older than 18 consumed 1,862.8 kilocalories per day — men averaged 2,159.6 and women 1,557.5, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). The global average stood at 2,960 kilocalories per day in 2021, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) 2022 report found.

U.S. Health regulators recommend a daily calorie intake of around 2,200 to 3,000 for men and 1,600 to 2,400 for women.

Food is undoubtedly in abundance in Korea, though. The country ranked 19th by average daily supply of calories per capita — which indicates the amount of calories available, rather than those consumed — with 3,420 per person as of 2018, according to the UN FAO data compiled by Our World in Data. Korea ranked the highest among East and South Asian countries. China stood at 48th with 3,206 kilocalories per day and Japan at 109th with 2,705.

Best in the eating game

There is also an element of truth in Koreans’ alleged — and sometimes self-proclaimed — seriousness toward food.

Koreans’ long-standing habit of filling bowls to their brim with cooked rice or grains — and stacking rice in the bowl well above its limit, even, to create a gobongbap — has been documented through various historical texts from both Korea and abroad.

Gobongbap, in Korean, refers to steamed rice piled high in a bowl like the peak of a mountain. [FREEPIK]

One notable observation of the country’s diet involves its “excessive eating.”

Scholar Yi Ik (1681-1764) of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) wrote in his book on Korean and Chinese cultures — existing under Joseon and Qing Dynasty (1636–1912), respectively — that the “[Joseon] people are best under the sun for eating a lot.”

Per Lee’s account, those from the Ryukyu Kingdom, or present-day Japan’s Okinawa region, mocked a Joseon person by saying “Your people are always scooping rice into large bowls and eating it with spoons, so how can they not be poor?”

Documents written by foreign missionaries during the late Joseon Dynasty also portrayed Koreans’ dining tables as overflowing with seemingly excessive amounts of food, and rice in particular.

Marie-Nicolas-Antoine Daveluy (1818-1866), a French Catholic missionary, named overeating as one of the Joseon people’s biggest shortcomings in a letter sent to his home country in the 1860s.

The missionary called excessive eating a universal tendency among the Joseon people, regardless of social class or wealth. The people perceived eating a lot to be an honorable thing and prioritized quantity over quality when it came to meals.

Daveluy recalls that members of the working class ate one liter of rice per meal and were always willing to go for a second or the third serving.

Whether or not the observation was biased, other historical documents also testify that the Joseon people consumed large amounts of multigrain rice. An average bowl of rice in modern Korea contains about 140 to 210 grams the grain; the amount consumed per meal during the Joseon period is estimated to be over three times that on average.

Rice bowls are arranged in the chronological order of their eras of origin, from a bowl used during the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392) on the far left to one made in 2012 by ceramic maker Zen Hankook on the far right. [ZEN HANKOOK]

Why did Koreans eat so much in the past?

It is hard to pinpoint a single factor that shaped Koreans’ eating habits. What explanations exist are not necessarily unique to Korea.

Joo Young-ha, a folklore professor at the Academy of Korean Studies, pointed out that the eating habits have been “similar across the globe for the poor,” especially before the Industrial Revolution.

When historical accounts mention “habit of excessive eating,” Joo says, “this more specifically means that the amount of multigrain rice consumption was huge, and everyone, whether it be the ruling or working class, used to devour food when there was a lot to eat, for example, at a feast.”

But Joo also noted that the cultural difference between the East and West, at the time, influenced the way Joseon people’s eating habits were depicted by foreigners.

“After the 19th century, the bourgeoisie in Western Europe viewed excessive eating negatively based on table manners,” the professor explained.

While many foreigners in Korea find greetings like “Have you eaten yet?” unique to the country, similar greetings exist in other countries as well. The Chinese phrase for “Have you eaten?” is interchangeable with “How are you?” in English, though it has become antiquated in modern China.

What is comparatively unique about Koreans’ food culture is the heavy consumption of rice.

Possible factors behind Koreans' affinity toward rice include a lack of diverse ingredients in the Peninsula and the country's historical emphasis on agriculture derived from Neo-Confucianism.

Moreover, because rice farming was more labor-intensive than wheat farming, the working class historically needed more energy to fuel long hours of work. This nourished a strong preference for and attachment to a rice-based eating culture.

Korean dishes on a table [SHUTTERSTOCK]

Is rice still Korea’s most important food?

Even though Koreans still receive an average of 43 percent of their daily calorie intake from grains according to the KDCA's latest data, the figure has been on a steady decline — it was 58 percent in 1998.

Calorie intake from meat, on the other hand, has jumped. Meat accounted for eight percent of Koreans' total calorie intake a day on average in 1998 and now accounts for 14 percent.

Economic development and Westernization have reshaped Koreans’ eating habits and preferences significantly, especially as smaller amounts of food now provide more calories than they did before.

Rice consumption has been shrinking constantly over the past decade as a result. The Korea Rural Economic Institute estimated last January that an average Korean consumed more meat than they did rice in 2022, with a single person on average consuming 58.4 kilograms (128.8 pounds) of meat and 55.6 kilograms of rice.

In 2023, Koreans ate about half the amount of rice that they did 30 years ago — a record low, according to Statistics Korea.

The agriculture industry has been wary of the shrinking demand for rice and the resulting volatility of its market price. The government has been buying hundreds of thousands of tons of the grain from the farmers every year in response, leading to complaints about the financial burden the practice imposes on taxpayers.

But while Korean food has enriched its country of origin for years on end, it is now finding new homes overseas. Its future may be more multicultural than ever before.

The recent popularity of meal kits is considered one possible driver of future demand. While the average rice consumption by consumers declined by 0.4 percent last year, the rice consumption for industrial processing rose 1.7 percent to 691,422 tons.

And other foods, riding on the growing popularity of K-pop, have been taking off in the global market. Exports of Korean ramyeon, gim (dried seaweed) and cooked rice hit a record high last year, even causing shortages of gimbap (a rice roll wrapped in seaweed) in supermarkets.

But even as K-food finds fame around the world, it will always hold special significance as an emblem of community in Korea. A colorful bowl of bibimbap is perhaps one of the most well-known examples of traditional Korean food. It is not difficult to find people gathered around a huge bowl of bibimbap, mixing the rice with vegetables, during local festivals and events. The dish, after all often symbolizes harmony and warmth of sharing meals.

So the next time someone suggests, “Let’s have a meal sometime,” how about a bowl of delightful bibimbap?

BY SHIN HA-NEE [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]

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