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Last Sunday afternoon, I got an email from a reader saying they very much appreciated my column of previous week. It was before the newspaper was printed out for Monday.
The apparent online reader said that my opinion in the column "gives us a glimmer of hope that things may eventually change for the better," and that he has always been "uncomfortable dining with colleagues in Korea, due to the practice of eating out of the same bowl."
Even though he did not specify "Korean colleague," the first thing that struck my mind was how many foreigners would have been uncomfortable dining with Koreans.
While flourishing Korean restaurants serve large soups in individual bowls, some small restaurants still don't care to do the same. Then it becomes a matter of patrons' choice like anything else. As a famous Korean saying goes, "If a monk does not like the temple, the monk has to leave."
Many foreigners probably wonder why the restaurants that already use so many dishes couldn't be bothered to use a couple more for the health and safety of their patrons. I agree it is very hard to understand. Last week the reader who wrote me also asked about the history of the shared bowl and if there is any particular reason behind this practice.
The history of Koreans' sharing bowl would probably go way back to the pre-historic age, as a natural family custom. From my childhood years, I remember my own bowls for rice and soup, served with several dishes to share with family members at every meal. That's not much different from my peers.
Besides individual bowls for rice and soup, there used to be a little bigger bowl in the center of table, which was normally filled with a thicker soup. We call it "jjigae." As a symbol of closeness, we ate the jjigae together for a long time. In many Korean homes, this practice is still going on.
Because many families eat out of the same jjigae bowl, this is likely why restaurants use this as well. Other than that, I could not find any reasonable answer beyond economic reasons. The restaurant owners just want to save the time and expense of serving small bowls.
The second most unpleasant practice of Koreans in Korean restaurants is to feed each other with bare hands, or using all 10 fingers.
Feeding a handful of grilled meat, especially "samgyopsal," wrapped with vegetables and spicy bean-paste into the mouths of others looks very unpleasant and unsanitary.
Although it's a centuries-old Korean custom of feeding children and showing closeness and affection for your guests, feeding grown-ups with your fingers in a dinner meeting is not good.
I have seen many second generation Koreans, living in the North America and visiting Korea for the summer, confront this cultural difference in Korean restaurants. Even elementary school kids would refuse this practice, saying they can eat by themselves, and they insist to eat with their own hands, which they know for sure are clean as they just washed their hands.
The third most unpleasant practice in most small Korean restaurants is to reuse, allegedly, the side dishes. It is a die-hard practice in most small restaurants that all the leftover dishes are "rearranged" in the kitchen and served to new patrons.
"We do not serve leftover side dishes." - This is the sign we find in almost every Korean restaurant, but you can't tell it is new just by looking. One way to tell is to observe a restaurant employee cleaning up a table ― if they dump the leftover food speedily into one container while clearing the plates then you can be reassured; however, if they carefully arrange the side dishes on the tray or cart, then it is suspicious.
Seoul City Hall's sanitary officials said last week that most Korean restaurants these days do not "recycle" the side dishes under their strong guidance. They preferred to chose the word "recycle" to my question of "reusing" the side dishes.
Asked further about what kind of strong guidance is exercised, they replied, "restaurant owners are periodically educated not to recycle any leftover dishes except for those items like fresh green leaves and vegetables."
The city officials admitted they close their eyes for reusing the B.B.Q. vegetables. When I asked, "Will they have enough time in the kitchen to carefully wash off the grease and parasites from the leftover greens? The sanitary officials replied, "That is such a minor thing to be regulated by the Korean Public Sanitation Law."
The fourth most unpleasant ― and the most frightening ― practice in Korean restaurants is the use of sharp scissors for cutting food at the table. Scissors started to be used in restaurants specialized in Naeng-myon, or cold buckwheat noodles, in the 1970s, but now you can see them in every Korean restaurant used for cutting meat, seafood and noodles.
About 20 years ago, a column in a local paper by a senior Japanese journalist left a silent but widespread message to many Koreans, especially to restaurant owners. At that time, I thought that things might eventually be changed for the better ― by serving with smaller and safer scissors designed only for cutting noodles.
In Japan, China, and even in North Korea, they never cut the noodles because they have seen the full-length noodles as a symbol of longevity for a long time.
Now it is almost impossible to find any Korean restaurant which does not serve with scissors. Many foreigners say that it was a scary and appetite-killing experience to see the sharp scissors which look like an "assault weapon" on the table.
Come to think of it, I think I know the reason: South Koreans want to eat quickly using whatever tools are available, and restaurant owners want "a quicker cycle of patrons" so by using scissors, and even by making noodles softer they get patrons to eat faster.
Why in the world is the character of South Koreans becoming unpleasant more and more in every field of life?
The writer, a former reporter with The Korea Times, worked 10 years at the Hankook Ilbo New York and returned home to be in sports marketing and show business. He was the first managing director of the Korea branch of the U.S.-based International Management Group. He can be reached at dhyang28@gmail.com.
