MORNING CALM TALES The irresistible appeal of Korea's 'pojangmacha' food tents

Had I not gotten lost in Jamsil one cold December night, I might never have discovered the soul of Seoul.

It was the early 1990s, and I decided to be adventurous and find a different way back to my apartment. Somewhere in the maze of Jamsil 2-danji, I got twisted around and ended up on a street I had never taken before. Getting lost there was surprisingly easy. At night, the apartment buildings all looked alike, row after row of concrete towers rising into the darkness. I knew the subway station was somewhere behind me and my apartment somewhere ahead. Beyond that, I was guessing.

The December air had a bite to it. I shoved my hands deeper into my coat pockets and kept walking.

Then I saw the orange glow.

On the side of the street stood a rectangular tent, glowing in the darkness. Light filtered through thick orange plastic, turning it into a giant lantern. Shadows moved behind the vinyl. Every so often, someone lifted a flap, releasing a burst of steam and noise into the cold before ducking inside.

I stopped. What was this place? There was no sign or name that I could see, yet people kept disappearing inside. Curiosity got the better of me. I crossed the street, lifted the flap and ducked inside.

Everyone stopped talking.

For a second or two, the entire tent went quiet. Faces turned toward me. Men holding small glasses of soju stared. A woman paused with her chopsticks halfway to her mouth. I stood there with the plastic flap still in my hand, wondering if I had made a terrible mistake.

Then someone resumed talking. Another person laughed. Almost as quickly as it had stopped, the noise returned. Everyone went back to eating and drinking as though I belonged there.

The first thing that hit me was the warmth, thick and damp and heavy with steam. My glasses fogged. Condensation ran down the orange plastic walls. Then came the smells — hot broth, frying oil, garlic, red pepper paste, something sweet cooking on the griddle and something unmistakably fishy.

A griddle hissed and popped. Oil bubbled in a deep pot. Men and women sat shoulder to shoulder on small stools, coats open and faces flushed from the heat and alcohol. Green bottles of soju crowded the counter beside small glasses and half-eaten plates of food.

Someone shouted something from the other end of the tent, and laughter erupted. I had no idea what was so funny. I smiled anyway.

The middle-aged woman behind the counter spotted me. Her face was red from the heat as she moved between the griddle, bubbling pots and her customers.

“Eoseo oseyo,” she said. Welcome. It was one of the few Korean expressions I knew.

“Anjeuseyo,” she said, pointing to an empty stool. Sit down. I knew that one, too.

By then, I was too embarrassed to turn around and retreat into the night, so I obliged her and sat down.

The counter was crowded with foods, many of which I couldn’t identify. Rice cakes simmered in a fiery red sauce. Oil snapped and hissed around pieces of squid, sweet potatoes and seaweed-wrapped noodle rolls. A long, dark roll of something sat on a cutting board. I would later learn it was "sundae" — Korean blood sausage.

Rising from a tub of steaming broth was what looked like a small bamboo forest. Dozens of wooden sticks protruded from the pot, each holding folded pieces of something pale and flat. I pointed to one.

For some reason, I thought of an old Schlitz beer commercial: You only go through life once, so grab all the gusto you can. It seemed as good a philosophy as any.

The woman pulled a skewer from the broth and handed it to me. I took a bite. It was hot enough to make me pull air through my teeth. Soft, slightly chewy, a little fishy. Not bad. I nodded my approval. The woman seemed satisfied and returned to her cooking.

I had just eaten my first "odeng," fish cake folded onto a wooden skewer and simmered in hot broth.

At some point, one brave soul sitting nearby decided to try his English on me. Whether his courage came from genuine curiosity or the soju he had already consumed, I couldn’t say.

“Hello,” he said, smiling.

“Hello,” I replied, also smiling.

He tried another question. I answered and then tried some of my newly acquired Korean. We didn’t get very far. His English quickly ran out. My Korean had never really started. After an awkward pause, we both laughed.

Someone poured me a glass of soju. I drank it. The alcohol hit the back of my throat before spreading warmth through my chest. I coughed, earning another laugh.

I tried another Korean word. More laughter. Another glass appeared.

By the end of the night, I was trading shots of soju with people whose names I didn’t know, trying out my new Korean and laughing through conversations none of us completely understood.

Without knowing it, I had discovered the "pojangmacha."

The word literally means “covered wagon,” a fitting name for what began as a food cart on wheels. Vendors could move from neighborhood to neighborhood, selling inexpensive food and drinks wherever people gathered. Over time, many became stationary and were enclosed with cloth and later plastic tarps to keep out the wind and cold. By the time I arrived in Seoul, the glowing orange tents were part of the city’s nighttime landscape.

After that first night, I saw them everywhere.

I also began learning the food. There was "tteokbokki," thick rice cakes swimming in a fiery red sauce; odeng skewers simmering in broth; sundae, Korean blood sausage; and "gimbap," seaweed-wrapped rice rolls fragrant with sesame oil.

Then there was "anju," food eaten while drinking. Dried squid I could understand. The roasted sparrows took a little more courage.

And then there was "beondegi," boiled silkworm pupae. I could usually smell them before I saw them, an earthy odor rising from a steaming metal pot. The first time I looked inside and saw hundreds of small brown pupae glistening in the broth, I stared for a long time. Apparently, Schlitz had not prepared me for everything.

And, of course, there was always something to drink — beer, or soju. Usually soju. But food and alcohol were only part of what made a pojangmacha special.

I began to understand that during an early excursion downtown with a Korean friend. By then, I knew enough to duck beneath the orange plastic, find a stool and accept a glass of soju when one was poured. That first night, the tent was crowded. The plastic walls bulged whenever the wind blew. Steam clouded the air, heavy with the smells of broth, grilled food, cigarette smoke and soju. Strangers sat close enough for their elbows to touch. A man at one end of the counter talked loudly to anyone who would listen. The woman running the place fired back a comment that sent everyone into laughter.

My friend watched the scene for a moment, then he told me about "jeong." There was no single English word for it, he explained. Affection, attachment, warmth, a bond that grew between people through time and shared experiences. None of those words seemed quite enough. He gestured around the pojangmacha. This, he told me, was where you could feel it.

Perhaps that was why pojangmachas meant so much to Koreans. People went there after difficult days. They drank with friends, confessed things they had been carrying inside and nursed broken hearts. In Korean movies and television dramas, the heartbroken always seemed to end up beneath an orange tent, drinking soju until the woman running it decided they had suffered enough.

A pojangmacha wasn’t simply a place to eat and drink. It was a place where Seoul lets its guard down. People drank, laughed, cried and told each other things they might not say anywhere else. Maybe that was jeong. Or at least, it was the first time I thought I understood it.

Then I remembered that first orange tent in Jamsil and realized I might have experienced a little jeong before I even knew the word.

I had walked in as a lost foreigner and brought the tent to a momentary silence. Then everyone simply went back to eating and drinking as though I belonged there. A middle-aged woman had welcomed me and found me a stool. A stranger had tried to speak my language, and I had tried to speak his. We understood almost nothing the other was saying. It didn’t matter.

By the end of the night, my face was warm from the soju and the heat of the tent. My coat smelled of frying oil and fish broth. I was trading shots with people I had never met before, trying out my handful of Korean words and laughing when I got them wrong.

Outside, the December air was cold, and Seoul was still a city I barely knew. Inside the orange tent, the broth was steaming, the soju was flowing and laughter surrounded me. It was warm inside the tent, and warm inside my heart.

Jeffrey Miller is the author of several novels. His latest is "The Tree at Panmunjom," about the 1976 Axe Murder Incident. Reach him at daejeonscribe@yahoo.com.