Korean food was shaped by invaders, rice taxes and cheap army Spam
Rice is not native to Korea, and for centuries it was so costly that cooks stretched it with barley or beans. Yet in the kingdom of Silla it paid taxes, and the Sino-Korean character for tax still contains the rice plant. Much of the country's table has a similarly tangled backstory.
Early Koreans lived on millet, barley, wheat and legumes. Farming took hold in the Mumun pottery period, from around 1500 BCE, when migrants arrived from Manchuria's Liao River basin, and archaeology suggests fermented beans appeared then too. By the Three Kingdoms era rice had become the preferred grain in the south. The northern Goguryeo people are credited with the earliest kimchi, while Baekje was known for cold and fermented dishes. Rice has been cooked in a heavy iron pot called a sot since at least the Goryeo period, and such pots turn up even in Silla tombs.
Conquest and trade kept adding layers. The Mongol invasions of the 13th century left behind mandu dumplings, grilled meats, noodle dishes and black pepper. Later in the Joseon era, scholars of practical learning urged looking abroad for farming ideas, and New World crops such as chili peppers, maize, sweet potatoes and peanuts arrived through China, Japan, Europe and the Philippines. Potatoes were prized because they grew on land nobody had farmed. By the 19th century around a thousand periodic markets, usually meeting every five days, doubled as places for entertainment.
The twentieth century was harsher. Under Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945, rice output rose to feed the empire's war effort while poorer Koreans might taste plain white rice once a year and otherwise ate millet and barley. After the Korean War, scarcity produced budae jjigae, a stew built from cheap processed foods like sausage and Spam.
South Korea's industrial boom then transformed diets. Meat consumption per person climbed from 3.6 kg in 1961 to 11 kg by 1979 and 40 kg by 1997, and bulgogi restaurants let the middle class eat beef regularly, while bread and noodles eroded rice. In 2009 the government launched a $77-million programme called Korean Cuisine to the World. Today kimchi comes with nearly every meal, and kimjang, the communal making of it, sits on UNESCO's intangible heritage list.
Source: Korean cuisine
