Korea

Food, Farming and Genetics in Korea

pronald — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 18:50:44 +0000

Food, Farming and Genetics in Korea

Korea has a 5000 year history of food and farming. How much can a nine-year old and her mother learn on a two week visit to this land of miracles?

For the first few nights we stayed in a tiny room in a traditional Korean house called a "Hanok" house. There is a courtyard that everyone shares that the owners have filled with lots of stuff including a rabbit named Mimi. In this quiet place, one can imagine ancient times before the rebirth of this powerful nation that was almost totally destroyed by the Korean war (1950-1953). Now, although most cities are dominated by massive buildings and congestion and where many restaurants are run by industry giants such as Samsung and Hyundai, a quieter life and traditional foods can still be found in the alleyways and countryside.

Our first night there, Audrey got up in the middle of the night to sit in the courtyard in the pouring rain. When the lightening got too fierce and frightening she returned to our futon put her head on the buckwheat pillow and slept so soundly that her jet lag was over with the first night.

The diet staple here is rice. According to the FAO, 47% of the total caloric intake in Korea were supplied by rice in 1965. These percentages decreased to 35% in 1995, due to incorporation of other foods in the diet. We have seen many beautiful farms with rice paddies, ginseng, peppers and soybean as well as massive acres of greenhouses tucked between industrial areas.

Here is a sampling of some of the foods we have tasted so far.

Thick slices of roasted potatoes
Chicken on a stick
Marinated dried fish with sesame and chiles
Radish and cabbage kimchi
HOT marinated peppers
Amaranth greens
Fiddlhead fern
Mung bean sprouts
Minature sardines
Acorn curd with cucumbers and carrots and sweet onions in sesame sauce
Soy curd in a spicy sauce
Tofu with 2 kind of mushrooms and greens in broth with several kinds of shellfish
marinated sesame leaves, marinated
A dark delicious vegetable green, probably from greens dried from previous season
different kinds of kimchi made from cabbage, radish or cucumbers
pumpkins, either fried or baked
Japchae sweet potato noodles mixed with sauteed vegetable
Rice
Bibimbap, a rice dish of mushrooms and vegetable and sauce
Bomandu, dumplings with onion, garlic and sesame inside
various stews with mushrooms, seaweed, green peppers, tofu
Different types of "jeon": Savory Korean pancakes

I watched a cooking demonstration by Paul Schenk to learn how the mung bean pancakes that are made. He began by soaking the mungbeans and a little rice for a few hours, blending the mixture to a batter, frying and adding green onions and green peppers marinated in sesame oil, garlic, sesame seeds and soysauce. "Jeon" is usually topped with pork or kimchi.

Drinks:
Unfiltered rice wine (makgeolli) is made through the fermentation of a mixture of boiled rice and nuruk with water. Nuruk is a fermentation starter made from grains, Aspergillus, Rhizopus and yeasts. For a great site on the history of fermentation in Asia see the FAO

Another fantastic fermented drink is made from plums-one of the best drinks I have ever tasted.
And then there is the 100 species fermented drink that Dr. An prepared for us
Bamboo tea

Many types of green teas, can be purchased from small shops such as this one.

Desserts:
Fresh peaches
Yakshik, steamed sticky rice with pinenuts
Korean donuts with cinnamon and honey
Rice cakes rolled in bean powder
Walnut shortbread
Ginko nuts
Roasted chestnus
Golden kiwi
White melon (yellow and white skin)
Grapes
Pine nut and walnut cakes with sweetened bean paste. I took a picture of the machine that makes this fabulous treat.

The entry to traditional restaurant in Insadong, Seoul:

and the full table of food:

My nine year old daughter is more interested in finishing the 7th book of Harry Potter rather than sampling the food. For Audrey's take on this trip, check out her blog.

pronald Sat, 08/14/2010 - 14:50

Less religion = more religious activism?

razib — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:22:32 +0000

Less religion = more religious activism?

Tom Rees:

It seems that when Christianity is popular, Christians are content with the idea of a firewall separating Church and State. It's only when Christianity begins to lose it's influence over the population at large that Christians begin to campaign for the State to adopt a Christian character.

Looking at survey data from 18 Western countries, they found:

-The fewer Christians in a country, the greater the support among Christians for a greater public role for religion (as shown in the graph).

-The polarization of views between Christians and non-religious on a public role for religion is greatest in countries where there are fewest Christians.

The relation is illustrated with a nice scatterplot:

Some of this can be attributed to specific factors in Europe relating to religious pluralism. Consider my coblogger Martin Rundkvist's reflections on carolling. Even if a society is very secular, if the dominant religious orientation is uniform, then its background assumptions suffuse one's daily life. One can therefore be a "cultural" Catholic or Lutheran, with an attachment to the exoteric forms associated with the religion, without being a believer. But when you have religious pluralism thrown into the mix people are going to disagree strenuously about exoteric forms. This applies even to the post-religious; an American atheist from a Jewish background may have a different attitude toward Christmas than an American atheist from a Catholic background. In other words, as European societies have become less Christian over the past generation, they've also had to face more religious pluralism. Christians will become more assertive and aggressive in direct response to Europe's growing Muslim community, which wishes to contest the tacit monopoly that Christianity has long had in Europe as the Faith.

But another issue which might be at work is that as nominal or marginal believers fall away, the set of individuals who remain committed Christians are more religious and exhibit more fidelity to their identity than before. This may result in a group of Christians who are much more cohesive and can engage in collective action out of proportion to their numbers. Whereas before more marginal and nominal members of the community might have served as a check on excessive activism, today those individuals may no longer be part of the Christianity community.

The power of an organized Christian community is clear in a society such as South Korea. Though only around 30% of the population is Christian, with almost half the population not having a religious affiliation at all, Christians have been over-represented in positions of power. The growth of the Christian religion has been rapid, but has slowed over the past 15 years. It seems possible that it may be nearing its "natural limit." But that does not mean that it won't influential in the years to come.

razib Mon, 12/21/2009 - 21:22

Tags

The two regions with the lowest aspirations for religious influence appear to be Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. From my own experience of growing up in that part of the world I read something different into the result than the authors of this piece have deduced.
In Ireland there is a distinct difference between what the public considers 'Christian attitudes' and what it considers 'universal moral attitudes'. Many of the assumptions of universal moral norms are absolutely taken for granted in Ireland - things like morality requiring a religious element, having religious instruction in schools, having a Catholic bishop in charge of school districts.
Until fairly recently it was assumed that a law preventing individuals of every religion from having the right to divorce was reasonable (it was even written into the constitution of the state).
When these sorts of things are challenged they are not taken by the Irish public as an attack on Catholicism or Christianity per se but an attack on universal morals and are thus rejected. The idea of religious diversity in Ireland simply means different types of Christianity being permitted. That one needs to take other beliefs or non belief into consideration is beyond the pale of most public thinking. If you read the newspapers or listen to the main public broadcasters there is an overwhelming religious bias that fits in entirely with the idea of a God keeping an eye on us, influencing events and answering prayers. To even raise a question about this is considered the height of bad manners. Remember, this is a country where the leaders of the religious orders summoned the government minister in charge of dealing with the abuse inquiries and cut a deal releasing them from over 90% of the financial cost for compensating the abuse. There was zero political fallout despite the fact that this resulted in several billion dollars cost being imposed on the public taxpayers rather than the wealthy church who carried out the abuse.

In US history, at least, there was a time when "religious pluralism" included different Christian sects, esp. of course the major division of protestant v. catholic. In Colonial times in Boston, there were incidents of Catholics being hanged for witchcraft. I live not far from the site of a catholic convent school that was burned to the ground in 1836 by a mob of protestants who thought that satanic sacrifices were being held. At various times there was actual rioting in the streets over prayer in school (catholics didn't want to have to say protestant prayers). Religious minorities were quite aware that separation of church and state protected them against the WASP majority. "Christians" aren't a monolithic group.

It would be interesting to see how South Korea (a highly Christian country) would fall out on this plot.

It would be interesting to see how South Korea (a highly Christian country) would fall out on this plot.

as i mentioned in the post, south korea is a very secular country, and not high christian. south korea is about as christian as the netherlands, 30%.

That's still remarkably high for an Asian country though Razib. I'd call that highly Christian. But then I think most people still think of Europe including the Netherlands as Christian even if most people really aren't there. (And even those who self identify have a pretty lose connection to either beliefs or practice)

clark, well, good point. but since i was comparing to europe, i think it's not proper to culture-norm. in any case,

1) the phillipines is really very christian as an asian country

2) korea is still very secular compared to world averages. 30% of koreans consider themselves religious, 41% not religious, 29% convinced atheists, according to world values survey.

Reminds me of a bit in "The Political Economy of Beliefs" which suggests that elites allow enough secularism to rile up the religious.

Nobody Likes Us

mikethemadbiologist — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 06:22:58 +0000

Nobody Likes Us

From Reuters:

In South Korea, traditionally a U.S. ally, two-thirds of people under 30 said in a recent poll that if there were war between North Korea and the United States, they would side with North Korea.

"Anti-Americanism runs deeper and is qualitatively different than in the past, when it was largely attributable to unpopular U.S. policies," Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, says in a new book on the subject, "America Against the World."

The sad thing is that the Bushists don't even care...

mikethemadbiologist Thu, 07/27/2006 - 02:22