Korean Job Discussion Forums

[CabbageTownRoyals]

Hopefully, after years of confusion, I've found them. I had tried researching this many times and wasnt so sure that just because I was paying 3X the price of the cheap ones, that they were free range. Turns out the shopkeepers translation of 'free-range' was just 'healthy' meaning the egg had nutrients - perhaps the chickens were just well-fed battery chickens or extra chemicals were added to the feed, or even worse, had even more antiobiotics pumped into them? But in my broken Korean I had a conversation with an ajjuma who told me that these were really free range.

Although you can't read it, the white part says in English:"Animal welfare" Can someone translate what the Korean says? Because I would definitely pay a lot more if I knew for certain they were free range...

[gingermongrel]

Hey, brilliant - well done finding these!

I'm hoping we can confirm they are free range, I'll definitely seek them out if so.

I'm astonished anyone here is bothering to produce free range eggs the way a lot of Koreans treat their animals..... I hope I'm wrong and these are genuine.

[oskinny1]

I remember reading about how a lot of Korean farmers put `organic` on their products because of the high prices they fetched but were anything but organic. Sorry I can`t provide a link or proper quotation marks or apostrophes.

[Matilda]

Sorry to say it... but these are fertilised eggs!

유정란 at the top of the box means 'fertilised' - technically they are free range - but also means the roosters are extra happy too!

I too have tried in vain to buy free range and often bought these too (thinking I am paying more and the pictures look more 'natural').

I have even had my Korean partner try to find just free range on the internet to know what to look for - but they all seem to be fertilised. Anyone else able to help?

[kiwiduncan]

So it's not just kindergarten kids' welfare that CabbageTownRoyals looks out for.

The stamp reads "Pulmuwon Animal Welfare Certification".

I visited the house of a local KFEM member family in Yeosu last weekend. They had chooks in the garden.

[kiwiduncan]

[mehamrick]

I can't speak for all chicken farms here in Korea, but the one the wifes father owns is cleaner than anything I have seen back home. Around 800,000 birds all corn fed, and I think they give them one shot a year. Cant even tell your on a farm unless you open one of the doors to the houses. They keep them on average about three years before selling them off.

[spliff]

^I'd rather eat your father-in-laws eggs than eat K-freerange ones where who knows what the hell they've been eating running around the streets of Korea.

[Matilda]

KiwiDuncan - I used to notice a speck of blood in there. No beaks or feathers to be found!

[CabbageTownRoyals]

Ok, some nice comments. but I still don't know if they're really free-range or not, or what it all means. Two other posters have contradicted each other. Is there anyone out there fluent in Korean, or...a Korean perhaps, lol ? that can translate....

bump bump

[kiwiduncan]

We have the sme problem in Korea as we have in the UK or New Zealand. Peoples' ideas of what makes eggs free range can be quite mixed. I've known people who think chickens are only free range if they are in an unfenced area and allowed to roam the garden completely freely (and get tgorn up by the neighbour's dog sadly). Others consider free range chickens and eggs to include chickens housed inside chicken barns - so long as they have a certain amount of space to more around

The only way to be completely sure that your eggs are free range and your veges are organic is to raise them yourself. That's not really an option in Korea for expats however (unless you're really planning to put donw roots here), so the next best thing is to search the net and see what 유정란 (according to the dictiionary 유정 has two meanings - humaneness or wetdream) really involves.

Here are some pictures of what producing humane-eggs in Korea involves.







From what I can see, free-range chickens in Korea don't exactly live in wide open green meadows full of tasty crickets and worms, but they are still raised in better conditions than chickens that are debeaked and boxed into cages with no room to move.

[timhorton]

Free Range Comparison - Chickens and ESL Teachers


If an ESL Teacher (or Korean Chicken) once lived in a 7 pyong apartment (cage)...then moves to a 10 pyong apartment (cage)...that person (or Korean Chicken) is now living in a free range environment. The only difference is the value of the chicken rises 3X!

[CabbageTownRoyals]

[kiwiduncan]

The chickens in the pictures about look healthy and content enough. One of the eco-villages in Korea earns a lot of its money through its free range chicken farming.

I remember eating organic free range chicken in the UK - it tasted like a different animal.

[xtchr]