Ipdong, onset of winter, and ondol
By Yi Woo-won
Ipdong falls on Nov. 7 this year. It is the 19th of 24 solar terms heralding the alternation of seasons and climate changes. The seasonal solar terms came from ancient Chinese calendars thousands of years ago, but they are now commonly used in the Asian countries, including Korea. They are incredibly accurate and highly useful for many people, such as farmers.
In the olden days when I was young, Ipdong was perceived as an admonishment for people to be ready and brace themselves to live through the rigors of the long, cold winter. To cope with the long, brutal months, they always thought of preparing two things: enough fuel to warm homes and large quantities of kimchi ― the indispensable side dish on the dinner table.
Back in the 1940s, when I still lived with my parents, firewood was the only source of fuel to heat our 'ondol' ― the traditional under-floor heating system. In those days, many people illegally cut down trees in the mountains for firewood. Eventually, from this indiscriminate felling, mountain after mountain was virtually stripped of trees.
However, firewood in the market was very expensive and many poor people could not afford to warm their homes. I was always envious of those rich houses where I saw many stacks of firewood in the yard. When I was in high school shortly before the Korean War, I always slept on the unheated floor during the winter. I thought I had to save the scant reserve of firewood for my elderly parents.
Yeontan (coal briquettes) came out as a welcome alternative to firewood in the early 1960s after the Korean War. It was made with coal dust and clay as a gluing agent. It was easy to handle for both cooking and home heating, plus not expensive. It was reported that by 1988, 73 percent of Korean households used yeontan for home heating. Unfortunately, however, yeontan had a fatal drawback: they emit carbon monoxide ― a poisonous gas nicknamed “The Silent Killer.”
In fact, everyone in my family suffered a few times from minor poisoning from the toxic fumes that leaked through the ondol floors from the kitchen furnace below where the yeontan was burnt. When we did, we woke up early in the morning and drank a lot of the juice of water-kimchi (or radish kimchi) and we felt better soon. It was our home remedy for detoxification. I couldn't believe this simple water-kimchi had such an amazing cure for headache and nausea caused by the poisoning.
Despite the deadly carbon monoxide gas which claimed many lives each year, yeontan was favored by a large majority of households due to its abundant availability and affordability. I was grateful for yeontan because it indeed helped our family to pass through the winter comfortably each year. Of course, I worked every now and then to find cracks where a leak in the wall or floor could occur to protect my family from gas poisoning.
Then, in the later part of the 1990s, people started to switch the fuel from yeontan to oil or gas boilers, which still maintained the ondol floor-heating system by embedding hot-water pipes in the existing floors maintaining the traditional warmth of ondol floors. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there are more demerits than merits in the boiler system, because I've never felt that unique, tangible warmth I used to feel on my previous ondol floor with yeontan. Furthermore, I was always shocked to look at the extortionate gas bill at the end of each month.
Sometimes I feel a bit nostalgic for my little yeontan-heated ondol room when I lived in Daegu decades ago. When I came home from work on many freezing afternoons in winter, there was nothing more comfortable and relaxing than lying on the nice and hot ondol floor, feeling the warmth working through my entire body, thawing all my stiff muscles, bones and weary mind as well.
Yi Woo-won (
yiwoowon1988@gmail.com
) lives in Waegwan, North Gyeongsang Province and has been writing since 1986.