Early misadventures in Korean food: Part 1

Korean women prepare kimchi in the early 20th century. Robert Neff Collection

Several decades ago, when I first came to Korea as a young soldier, I knew almost nothing about the country save what I had seen on the popular American television program “M*A*S*H.” I was stationed in the mountainous region of Gangwon Province, a relatively quiet and rural part of the country, and our camp was small and primitive. Very few of my fellow soldiers ventured far from the “ville” — the small camp town located just outside the gate — and they devoted little of their free time to learning Korean, the culture or even experiencing the local cuisine. Many considered eating in the KATUSA snack bar a culinary adventure.

My first adventure with Korean food occurred during an annual military exercise (Team Spirit), when my unit was deployed near a small mountain village. Our timing was perfect. The village was celebrating a wedding, and some of the kind, elderly villagers invited us to come and partake in the feast. As I recall, there were only three or four of us who went — and only after being warned by our commander that we were absolutely forbidden to consume any alcohol.

Our Korean hosts did their best to entertain us. Our plates were heaped with — to us — strange foods, and as the newest soldier in the group, it was decided that I would sample everything first. There was no problem with the meat dishes, of course, but it took some fortitude to try the various kimchi. They were heavily fermented and gave off a strong smell, but, much to my surprise, I found I liked some of them.

A young Korean man enjoys a meal in the late 19th or early 20th century / Robert Neff Collection

Sundae (blood sausage), however, was too much. I barely managed to choke it down, but I smiled at our hosts and pretended to enjoy it. When my companions asked me how it tasted, I could only tell them that it was indescribable and they would have to try it for themselves.

They did, and they did not like it. They refused to eat the small portions on their plates, and I have always regretted their — and to a degree, my own — rudeness to our hosts.

Judging from diaries, letters home, old newspaper articles and books, early Americans were not that adventurous when it came to Korean food.

In 1893, Mattie Noble, an American missionary, described a wedding feast she attended:

“Soon eatables were brought in & given to each one present. There were candies & fruits & nuts. Kimchi (a kind of pickles, highly seasoned) & soup, on top of the soup they sprinkled a meat seasoning (probably dog’s meat).”

A bustling onggi (earthenware pottery) market on the outskirts of Seoul, circa 1900 / Robert Neff Collection

I doubt she tasted the soup, but she probably sampled some of the kimchi. This fermented dish was often mentioned in foreign correspondence — usually in a derogatory manner.

While traveling in the interior in the 1880s, Lillias Underwood, an American missionary, described the small inns as having “tall earthen jars, from two to three, or rarely four feet high, and two or three feet in diameter, in which Ali Baba’s cutthroat thieves could easily hide, are ranged along the side of the wall, but more frequently in the courtyard. They contain various kinds of grain, pickles, beer, wine, and there are always several holding kimchi (a sort of sauerkraut), without which they never eat rice.”

Another American missionary doctor, Horace N. Allen, claimed “the odour of genuine kimchi in all its strength is something remarkable.”

He recalled that one afternoon, while working in the Korean government hospital in the mid-1880s, he was in his home office when he was “met with a most penetrating smell” that he had never encountered before. He assumed it was the foul smell from one of his patients who had wandered over from the hospital. A quick search revealed there were no wayward patients, only an “unsuspicious-looking little jar” filled with kimchi — a gift from a grateful patient.

Allen immediately ordered it thrown out. However, “from the perfumed breaths” of his laborers, he discovered that they had “appreciated” the gift, despite his inability to do so.

A perfect gift from a friend: homemade kimchi, January 2025 / Robert Neff Collection

Others shared his aversion to the smell. Another American missionary, Anabel Nisbet, wrote:

“You do not have to see a dish of kimchi to know it is there. One of my friends had a part of a closet torn out searching for the rodent she was sure had died in the wall, before she traced the odor to the girl’s school supply of kimchi for the winter, which she had allowed to be stored in her cellar.”

Yet, despite his initial aversion to kimchi, Allen eventually came to like it. He declared that when kimchi was made without garlic, it was simply delicious. Ironically, he even went so far as to boast: “I seem to have been one of the few foreigners who took to this article of food and I always had it put down for winter consumption minus the garlic, which deprived it of its objectionable odour.”

Perhaps one of the strongest early advocates of kimchi was Richard Rutt, an Anglican missionary (later a Roman Catholic priest) who published a series of articles in The Korea Times in 1957.

He wrote:

“It is a pity that kimch’i has become a joke for foreigners. It is typical of the bad press which Korea has accrued in Western circles since the withdrawal of the Japanese. Quite apart from the fact that kimch’i is a very important article in balancing the Korean diet, it is also a food which needs skill if it is to be prepared well, as everyone who has sampled Korean inns will know. It is also a generic name for a large number of pickles made with different recipes, some of which are admittedly more readily acceptable to the unacclimatized Westerner than others, but some of which are delicious by any standard.”

He went on to note that he wished that “some foreigners who are fain to blench at the smell of late winter kimch’i might understand the feelings that some Koreans have about relatively mild cheeses. Time and again I have found my houseboy destroying perfectly good Western foodstuffs because ‘the smell was bad.’”

His closing statement resonates with my own memories. I eventually came to like kimchi, but it took much longer for my Korean friends to appreciate cheese. I still recall the horrified expressions on their faces when I took them to the KATUSA snack bar for a lunch of cheese ramyeon.

Over the years, perceptions of food have changed. Cheese is now widely sold in Korean supermarkets, and kimchi is now an internationally recognized food, found even in the grocery stores of my small town in the United States — with a high price tag. Although it is packaged much like the kimchi in Korea, it lacks the genuine taste and variety I have come to crave.

Kimchi and sundae have become comfort foods that I deeply miss.