Seoul in a bowl
SOUTH KOREA: The thing I’ve slowly realised, after almost a week in Seoul, is that this heaving, teeming metropolis of 10 million people can be compared to a bowl of bibimbap.
Dear readers,
South Korea’s rich historical mix of dynasties, wars, climate, food, topography, architecture, pop culture and flavoured nuts has infused its capital with an identity that’s hard to pin down.
It feels and ‘tastes’ a lot like Asia, for sure. But its sheer size and diversity means it’s difficult to identify anything, architecturally speaking, as typically Seoul-like. Having up to 80% of its buildings and infrastructure reduced to rubble in the 1950s, and the rapid rebuilding that ensued, might explain this to some degree.
That said, take a wander and you’ll find restored feudal temples and palaces dating back to the 14th century Joseon era sitting alongside traditional hanok homes. Remnants of colonial occupation remain in a handful of civic buildings.
In addition to the piercing clusters of post-war sky scrapers, you have modern-day Zaha Hadid creations. Designers of Seoul’s city hall (reborn in 2012) tried their best to fuse ‘old’ and ‘new’ but I’m not sure its curving glass facade - meant to replicate the eaves of classical Korean houses - achieved this aim.
It feels like the city’s planners, of which there is actually a conglomeration of several semi-autonomous districts with their own regulations and agendas, have rarely sought to align or standardise their design, architectural or cultural aspirations.
The result imbues the city with a mish-mash aesthetic of sorts. Which is not a criticism; merely a short-lived and ignorant observation.
But how do you fuse it to deliver a cohesive identity, easily recognisable as something typically Korean or even endemic to Seoul, like you can about, say, Tokyo, Shanghai or even Bangkok (at a stretch)?
I can’t. And that bothered me, strangely, in the first few days. Not sure why I was asking so much of this city, so quickly.
Who Ate Up All the Shinga?
To backtrack a bit: Before arriving in a foreign country, I try and consume some of its literature. Several searches unearthed a consensus for Park Wan-Suh’s memoir, “Who Ate Up All the Shinga?” The title alone, had me. FTR, shinga is an edible flowering plant.
I confess to minimal knowledge of South Korea’s history, particularly that of the 20th century; except that gleaned from watching M*A*S*H.
Born in 1931, Park’s life straddled a good portion of the Japanese (1910-1945) colonial occupation, the country’s internecine conflict (1950-53), and the subsequent building of a post-war society.
In this ‘autobiographical novel’, she deftly recounts the hardships of the eras, and what it meant to be born female inside a patriarchal Confucian culture.
She’s funny. She’s incisive. She’s compassionate. She’s honest. The style is so natural and easy going, it’s like listening to a longstanding neighbour you respect and admire. But it’s her razor-sharp critiques of Korean society that leave a large and lingering impression.
I used to go around with a runny nose. Not the occasional droplet, either, but thick yellow mucus, the kind you couldn’t just snuffle back up. I was hardly alone. All kids were the same … As the snot got down to my mouth, I’d swipe at it. By the end of winter, edges of my sleeves would be clotted with a greasy black layer, like thick ointment … My mother [once took] the opportunity to scrub the sleeves of one well-padded jacket to get rid of the gunk that had coagulated, but it didn’t make much difference.
Back to the bibimbap
Myeon-dung in central Seoul was my ground zero. Nightly street markets in the neighborhood became my ‘dining room’. You can eat sumptuous lobster tail cooked on an open grill, topped with a subtle lemon butter sauce, for less than the cost of a Big Mac. Dumplings were to die for.
But it was a meal of bibimbap in a nondescript restaurant on a quiet back street towards the end of my stay that somehow brought Seoul to life. A meal that explained the city’s competing aesthetics and contrasting cultural traditions; that made Seoul a lot more palatable, at least to this occasional vagabond.
With bibimbap, you’re presented with a combo of meat and/or vegetable ingredients in a very hot cast iron pot. Rice underpins the dish; a raw egg is its crowning glory. Add your sauce of choice, and mix vigorously with spoon and metal chopsticks.
The congealed result is still being ‘cooked’ by the hot bowl as you mix and blend with furious abandon. But oh how it tastes surprisingly delicious. A local Cass lager complements the dish perfectly. But perhaps not at breakfast.
The diversity of the ingredients seem to mirror the diversity of Seoul’s city planners to deliver a ‘dish’ not so much pleasing to the eye, but tasty on consumption.
Video instruction of how to make bibimbap, courtesy of My Korean Kitchen.