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Change Your Life! |
Divided by ideology and a sealed border, Koreas share a national dish: kimchi |
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May 12, 2000
SEOUL, MAY 11 (AP) - Pro-Western South Korea is a world economic power. Communist North Korea is destitute. A sealed border separates their populations. But one thing they share is kimchi.
North Korea's foreign news outlet, KCNA, often delivers diatribes against the United States. But on Wednesday, it dwelled lovingly on the spicy, pickled vegetable dish popular on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone, the buffer zone between the Koreas.
In an unpolished English report, KCNA said: "Kimchi is one of the staple foods of the Korean people. As for its taste the foreigners, memory of that is of literally hot stuff."
Fermented with fiery red peppers, radishes, ginger, salt and lots of garlic, kimchi is believed to be rich in vitamins C, E and K. Usually made of cabbage, it is eaten at just about every meal in South Korea.
For years, North Korea has relied on outside aid to alleviate food shortages caused by drought, flooding and economic mismanagment. Many factories have shut down because they lack parts or electricity, but the kimchi industry appears healthier than ever.
"At present, kimchi is mass-produced by factories built in every district in Pyongyang and other major cities," KCNA said. Housewives joyfully make the homemade stuff, it said.
Kimchi is still made the old-fashioned way in rural parts of the South, and many areas in the less-developed North.
Producers bury vegetables in covered pots and let them ferment underground over the winter in a pickling method that was developed centuries ago, when a royal dynasty ruled all of Korea. The peninsula divided into American and Soviet spheres of influence at the end of World War II, and the two sides fought a 1950-53 war.
The kimchi that emerges in springtime comes in various categories, KCNA said, including "cabbage head kimchi," "cabbage-cut kimchi," "wrapped-up kimchi" and "watery radish kimchi."
In urban South Korea, it's hard to find a spot of unpaved ground for kimchi-burying. So many South Koreans buy factory-produced kimchi in large coolers that they keep in their kitchens.
A Seoul firm has even developed what it says is the perfect remedy for a hangover: a Vitamin-rich beverage called "kimchi juice."
High-tech kimchi doesn't impress Chang In Sook, a 55-year-old North Korean who defected to the South in 1997. She misses the kimchi she ate most of her life. "It retains the pure taste of cabbage," Chang said. "But South Koreans use too much seasoning when they make kimchi. So it tastes more of the seasoning than cabbage."
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