My Memories of Seoul

Canned Silkworm Larvae…

Foreigners like me saw cans like the one above when we were in grocery stores. They were on shelves and nobody could understand why. I asked one of the secretaries at my institute about it and she acted like she was very embarrassed and wouldn’t tell me anything.

People must have eaten silkworm larvae when food was scarce in the past. I don’t know why Koreans eat the worms now, however.

****Warning – Graphic Topics****

I hope readers can look at this post. I can hardly look at most of these pictures. I find some of these Korean food practices are barbaric, to be honest.

Pig Parts for Sale…

There are still many restaurants in Korea that say they specialize in pigs’ feet. In 1999, there were pig knuckles or feet for sale in a photo I took at Namdaemun Market. In many countries, specific, unusual animal parts are cooked and eaten, like sheep’s head stew in England, so pigs’ faces must have been used to make a certain Korean dish. Either way, I was always shocked whenever I saw pig parts for sale on tables in Seoul.

Fish…

Many small restaurants on side streets had a fish tank outside. I assumed it was so that people could choose the particular fish they wanted the cook to prepare for them to eat. Korean people told me I could go to the huge Karak Market near my residence and do the same thing. I think they still do this at the Market but I don’t see any fish tanks outside of restaurants on side streets now when I watch videos of Seoul.

In 1997, I was told they still ate octopus by cutting them up and eating pieces of them in some awful way, like eating them while they were still alive. I think horrible practices are just more hidden currently and they just are not talked about, like dog meat restaurants in the late 90’s, which I will describe soon in this post.

Dog Meat…

Nobody spoke of how, during the 1988 Olympics, foreign spectators found there were a lot of dog meat restaurants in Korea. There was an outcry by Westerners to this, so dog restaurants were put on backstreets by the time I lived there and no one talked about them when I lived in Seoul. I wanted to experience as much as I could of Korean culture while I was there, so I told my student, “Anthony”, that I wanted to try dog meat. He brought me to a small place on a side street beside where we lived in Karak-dong one evening. We sat at a table together. It was dark and quiet. An older woman waited on us. I think she owned the restaurant. I told Anthony to order soup for me(Korean people always ordered for me and spoke for me when I went somewhere with them) because it was a lower price than the other dishes on the menu. It was the same price(W15000) as having pork barbecue cost in Korea at the time. But it was terrible and wasn’t worth it at all. It tasted so awful and maybe you would be surprised to find out from me that the horrible taste of the dog meat stayed in my mouth for many hours after I ate that soup. I only ate a little of it. It was so awful and I’d never eat it ever again. After I ate at the dog meat restaurant, I felt like I was somehow being punished for daring to eat a dog, because of that horrible taste in my mouth I had for hours.

At the restaurant, we could have a special, traditional rice wine called “dong dong ju”. I ordered some after I had my soup. It wasn’t a light wine. It was golden-coloured and sort of thicker and much stronger than other Korean rice wines I had tried, like soju or makkeolli. Anthony told me that dongdongju had been made on farms for hundreds of years. I was happy that I could try some of it, even though I didn’t like my meal.

Fermented Skate…

At the time, there were large, fermented “skates” on sidewalks. Several times, I passed them while I walked along the streets. Sidewalks were usually very close to the shops on any streets, and sometimes skates were fermenting or on display outside, so people passed by very close to the skates. I walked by all of the food or sale items this. My husband asked my LG student, Mr. Lee, if there was a way he could try some and Mr. Lee told him he shouldn’t try to eat fermented skate because it was really awful and very distasteful to foreigners. It must have been really awful because I’ve never heard a Korean person say that about any of their food.