KoreaToday Kimchi-Making Day Tour Enchants Foreign Guests
By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter
One of the best ways for most people to get familiar with foreign food is without doubt by cooking it for themselves. An experiential event earlier this month offered foreigners a chance to take a step closer toward better understanding Korean cuisine by experiencing the making of kimchi, a representative Korean side-dish.
A couple of dozen foreign envoys and journalists enjoyed a trip to Jeonju, North Jeolla Province, for a day-long tour hosted by the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, and the European Union Chamber of Commerce in Korea (EUCCK).
Participants, most of whom were making kimchi for the first time, sliced various ingredients and mixed them with spicy pepper sauce under the instruction of Song Soo-yeon, the director of the Dongrakwon Center, which organizes Korean culture experience programs.
Making kimchi is just like walking around in a hanbok, a traditional Korean dress, according to Margarita Aida Gaerlan Tomassini, wife of the Italian ambassador to Korea Massimo Andrea Leggeri, because it's ``slow in making and intricate in process.''
After the kimchi making, participants relished a lunch of hanjeongsik, a Korean style table-d'hote, in a restaurant nearby. Dato Ramlan Ibrahim, Malaysian Ambassador to Korea, said he was impressed with the splendid layout and the colors of the dishes on the table, saying he doubted if he ``can sample all of them in a single day.''
There are criticisms that such a display of dishes could embarrass most foreigners, but no such complaints came from the table. ``It's fine. It gives more choices, if only we know what kinds of food they are,'' said Daniel Ontko, the second secretary at the Embassy of the Slovak Republic.
Ryuhei Matsumoto, an agricultural counselor at the Japanese Embassy to Korea, said expanding such programs aimed at visitors and tourists would be an efficient method to promote Korean food. Currently, almost all cities in Japan favored by tourists carry out food-making programs.
The official, however, added most of those programs there, unlike Korea, are operated as individual businesses rather than the government-led ones.
``The Korean government is very quick in announcing and carrying out food promotion, but in Japan it wouldn't be done in the same way,'' Matsumoto said. ``Maybe it is a cultural difference. I think both ways have good and bad things about them.''
Most people attending said it was an interesting opportunity to feel Korean culture, not just the food, and taking part in such events will be helpful in feeling close to Korean cuisine.
``A lot of foreigners here are like children when it comes to Korean food. It takes time to make them get used to it,'' said Jozef Hlavac head of the Food and Beverages Committee at the EUCCK. The Slovak, who has been living in Korea for four years, said he now enjoys drinking soju with Korean barbecue as well as kimchi.
The ministry said it is planning to organize more similar events later.
``We organized this tour to help foreign residents in Korea experience the local specialty of Jeonju, well known for its cultural legacy and food, as well as its traditional liquor and kimchi,'' said Park Soo-jin, the ministry's head of the promotional group for hansik globalization.
``Definitely there will be many more events like this to come, since hansik promotion is one of the key projects of the government,'' EUCCK industrial cooperations director Chang Kee-young said.