Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Corporal]

Given that in fairly recent history Koreans had food shortage and even now rather than asking someone "how are you" they will ask "have you eaten"? and are constantly pushing you to eat more, why are they then as a society SO obsessed with diets and weight loss (not health, just weight loss for its sake) and those stupid jiggly belt machines on the TV all the time? It seems awfully contradictory. Is is the type of thing where you should feel free to stuff yourself in public and then hide in the bathroom and puke it all up, or exercise like a maniac after any kind of indulgence?

It's the apparent paradox I am questioning here, hope this doesn't turn into the endless westerners are big/Koreans are small saga.

[OiGirl]

A thought I have had that is kind of related, Corporal...

You know the college-age kids who bleach their hair blonde and maybe dress a little more "Western" than the others...many times these kids are also overweight, not your typical Korean body shape.

Did they gain weight on purpose to go with their image? Or did they adopt this different image because they were outcasts because they were so fat? Or does their un-Korean image involve a strict diet of hamburgers and pizza and and the weight gain is a side effect?

[Zyzyfer]

Have you eaten, Corporal?

[Corporal]

yes, yummm just had some cheechuh peeja. with plenty of corn.

[Zyzyfer]

That's nice. I ate, too.

Did your baby eat? How about your husband? They both ate, right?

Did you eat, OiGirl?

[Corporal]

Yes. My baby had formula. Oops jh are you reading this? My husband had peeja too.

did anyone else eat today? or are they planning to eat tomorrow? I wonder how to ask that in Korean.

[Zyzyfer]

[Seatangle]

On a side note to a side note: Recently at the factory where I teach each day I went into the cafeteria with my students and absolutely everything was red. Ok, I can deal with Kimchi and one or two other pepper spiked dishes, but every damn thing that day was red red red, so I put my tray down and wished them all a good day, but there was no way I was going to eat lunch that day. I wasn't rude or anything, I just said I'd get lunch somewhere else and I'd see them all tomorrow. Well, for the next several days the cafeteria ladies were falling all over themselves offering me bread and jam, salad with cream sauce, spaghetti, or whatever western type food they could come up with. I think I inadvertantly insulted them, or hurt their feelings because I didn't eat lunch that one time. Ever since then even if I can't handle the rest of the meal I'll at least take rice and soup so I'm at least eating something, or if I don't think I'm in the mood for surprises, I'll skip lunch altogether and just leave directly after class.

Anyway, food is still extremely important in this society as I've learned.

For the records sake, tonight I had bokumbap and mandu from the chinese place in my apartment complex. Yum yum.

Brian

[Sucker]

I did.

Think I might quit my job tomorrow, the 14 hour days are starting to get to me.

[crazylemongirl]

I only had lunch today, a serving of rice because the rest of it was gross. I'm just not hungry at the moment, which is a pleasant change from the monster cravings I've been having.

CLG

[Cedar]

I just ate most of a chocolate bar I bought in Thailand. That was my midnight snack.

Before that I had two bowls of my own homemade tuna-kimchi bokumbap. MMMMMM nummy. Haven't had home-cooking since I got back.

So, I guess I did the dinner thing.

When my life is under control I try to eat 4-5 meals a day, and am usually successful. I love to snack. I am the human vacuum cleaner at the restaurant. I was raised to finish what was on my plate and when all the plates at the table are supposed to see my chopsticks in them... then I guess I have to clean them all!

Food is great, and Korean food is one of the reasons I hit seven years in the country in a month. This is the best food, reliably, on the planet. And I don't mean corn-cheese pizza.

[K-in-C]

My Korean friend, Eun Woo, came up from Toronto for a visit. She brought kalbi and kimchi. Yummy!

Regards,

Kate~Soon to be chillin in Changwon.

[jg]

I just ate my weight in biscuits and gravy. But it was low-fat gravy!

I think wealthy and consumptive societies are particularly susceptible to the diet and obsessive weight control fad that has been sweeping the globe for some time now. They have both the money to eat/consume endlessly and also to buy into the thin bodies/gimmick diet craze. Doesn't Korea often follow many other western fads as well? The fact that recently the cupboards were bare just makes it more obvious in Korea, perhaps.

Also, men have simply caught up to women. There has always been pressure on women to stay thin, and media images to promote it. However, instead of the (slow) equalizing of the sexes reducing the pressure on women, it simply added it to men. I remember when Men's Fitness magazine first came out. "Who the hell would buy this?" I thought. Ha!! Every third men's magazine now is about toning up and losing your gut. Maybe in a male dominated society like Koreas, perhaps now that men "need" to be fit, everyone feels the pain?

The jiggly belt and magic slimming pills are everywhere too, not just Korea. More and more my favorite telenovela is interrupted by ads for this sort of thing - and in Spanish! I remember my former Colombian roommates (women) ordering one of those belts on t.v., then cooking meals that were staggering in proportion. Staggering!

Just a theory. Now if you will excuse me, i have to go rip my abs.

[Zyzyfer]

I'm glad to hear that everyone had eaten last night. Did you eat breakfast? I ate breakfast.

[Gladiator]

It would seem the role of food and communal eating in Korea is historical. The poverty and privations Koreans endured post Korean war and all throughout the Japanese occupation instilled a sense of desperation to feed copiously at every meal as a prerequisite to survival. I have Kyopo friends who've told me that they risked beatings from their grandparents if they left so much as a morsel of rice in their "konggi". In fact I was once gently scolded by one of the most charming, graceful and feminine married Korean ladies I've ever known for leaving half of the "banchan" from a Toshirack takeaway meal I'd ordered. "You'll go to the devil for leaving all that" she smiled. Have you noticed Koreans of the previous generation never leave a SCRAP uneaten? Similar to the hatred of waste I can see in my mother's generation who experienced WW2 as a child I guess.

There is even a Korean idiom that translates as "Koreans will eat anything, even soap" or somesuch like.

Like many things in Korea, the historical context is key to understanding.

Oh, I just had pasta salad for breakfast. Standard bachelor fare.