How to Make Gochujang (and Dwenjang and Soy Sauce)

Dear Korean,

If you were unable to get the gochujang in the ready-made container, would you be able to make it using some more common ingredients, say ones found at your average health food store? Do you think it could be approximated by mixing soy miso and hot harissa?

Jennifer

First of all, a huge, honking NO to the abominable recipe involving miso and harissa. You may as well be working on getting dogs to mate with cats. Good lord, have you no respect for the natural order of things?

The other question, however, deserves more attention. Can one make gochujang with common ingredients found at a regular health food store? This may surprise people, but the answer is yes--as long as you have several months to spare. In order words, obtaining the ingredients is not the hard part; it is the skill and patience it takes to create the finished product. 

Even if you only buy gochujang from the store (as vast majority of Koreans do,) it would be helpful to know just how that sauce is made. A lot of people, for example, do not know that gochujang and soy sauce are related. If you didn't know that either, read on; you might find this interesting.

Meju: the Daddy

Everyone who has had gochujang knows that it is a type of paste. But what is the paste made out of? Answer: beans--fermented soy beans, to be more precise. Thus, in order to make gochujang, you have to start by fermenting some beans. Through long historical experience, Koreans developed the best way of fermenting beans. This is done by creating meju [메주], a block of ground beans. Both dwenjang and gochujang are made from meju, which makes meju the daddy of them all.

To make a meju, start by soaking soybeans in water for 12 hours or more. After the soybeans are soaked, boil them in high heat until the water comes to boil, then in medium heat, for approximately two hours until the beans are soft. Drain the beans until they are dry. While the beans are still warm, bring the softened beans into a mortar, and mash them with a pestle.

Mashing the boiled soybeans into paste
(source)

With the mashed soybeans, form a solid block. This block is called meju. A meju can be as large as a big brick, but it can be smaller. Koreans would usually use a frame, in which the mashed soybeans are stuffed, to create a block. But it is fine to just use your hands. (Aside: meju is also an old timey slang term for an ugly face.)

Monks and visitors of Daeheung Temple, making meju. One can see the
frame for making meju out of the soybean paste, which is in the tub.
(source)

Once the blocks are made, they have to be dried. Place the meju at a sunny location with plenty of ventilation, and dry them for seven to ten days. Then comes the exciting part--the fermentation. Place the dried meju in a warm room (around 77 to 83 degrees) for around two weeks, which is usually enough time for the mold to grow on its surface. Ideally, you want to use straws made from rice stalks to place the meju, as the microbes that make the best meju tend to live in those straws. 

Meju with fresh mold beginning to grow on the surface
(source)

It takes time for meju to fully ferment. Traditionally, Koreans would hang the meju with mold from the roof, and let it ferment for several months. Fresh soybeans are harvested in the fall, which means the meju hangs and ferments throughout the winter.

Hanging the meju to ferment.
(source)

Intimidated by this process? You should be. Like many other fermented foods like wine and cheese, this process requires delicate care. One misstep and the batch can be ruined. The process is so delicate that traditionally, Koreans had a series of elaborate rituals surrounding the sauce-making. A traditional Korean family would select a day of good fortune for making the sauce. For three days before the sauce-making day, the lady of the house would not leave the house, and refrain from having sex. For three weeks after the sauce-making day, the household members were not allowed to attend a funeral.

But if you live in Korea, you're in luck--all this can be skipped because there are many places that sell meju powder, i.e. powder made up of meju blocks that already finished fermenting. Although if you really didn't want to invite your date upstairs, you can always say: "Sorry, I am making gochujang tomorrow."

(More after the jump.)

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Them Fighting Koreans

Dear Korean,

How did the Korean expression "Fighting!" get so popular? I am curious to know whether or not it was first used by a very influential person, came from a popular Korean series or used for some sort of political propaganda to encourage Koreans to think positive.

Li San

That would have been a heck of a story, but it doesn't look that way.

Sample Korean usage of "Fighting"
(source)

First of all, the definition of the term first. "Fighting" is one of the most classic Konglish words: a borrowed word from English that barely makes sense. Koreans use the word to signify positive encouragement, like "Let's go!" or "Way to go!" 

To be sure, the use of the word "fight" in this context is not completely ridiculous, since there are some occasions when the English language use of the word is at least somewhat close. For example, the refrain for "Texas Fight," the official fight song for the University of Texas Longhorns, goes: "Yea Orange! Yea White! Yea Longhorns! Fight! Fight! Fight! Texas fight, Texas fight, yea Texas fight!" But of course, no Anglophone would yell "fighting," and it is not very clear how Koreans came to say "fighting." 

The popular theory is that the Japanese are fond of saying "huaito" (Japanese pronunciation of "fight",) and the term migrated to Korea in an even more ungrammatical manner. TK's own theory is slightly different: based on the historical usage of the term, "fighting" is more likely a contraction of "fighting spirit." For example, an article from Dong-A Ilbo from September 5, 1926 carried an interview with a baseball umpire who oversaw a baseball tournament. In the interview, the umpire lamented that some of the teams lacked the "fighting spirit" [파이팅 스피리트]. Throughout the early 20th century, Korean newspapers spoke of the "fighting spirit," usually in reference to sporting events. 

Then around 1960s, Korean newspapers could be seen dropping the latter part of the phrase (i.e. "spirit",) and began using "fighting" as a shorthand for "fighting spirit." For example, an article from Kyunghyang Shinmun from September 21, 1962 speaks of a Thai youth soccer team that visited Korea to play Korea's youth team. The article describes the match:

Both the visiting Thai team and the Korean team are youth teams. However, as they are made up of players who are younger than 20 years old, their intensity and skill level are comparable to adult players. Indeed, in terms of stamina and fighting, a match of vigor that cannot be seen in adult matches is expected. As both teams include three to four players who are of the national team caliber, soccer fans are taking note.

(TK's emphasis). It appears that the word "fighting," by early 1960s, came to mean something similar to "enthusiasm" in Korea. Around the same time, Korean people can be seen using "fighting" as a cheering slogan. 

Korean people are fully aware that "fighting" does not actually make sense in English. In 2004, the National Institute of Korean Language attempted to push people away from using the word that makes no sense, suggesting the exclamation "aja" as a replacement. That campaign failed completely, like many other ham-fisted efforts by the Korean government to change the national culture from the top down. Although "aja" is (and has always been) commonly used, "fighting" is very much alive in everyday Korean parlance, and it's not about to go away any time soon.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

50 Most Influential K-Pop Artists: 7. Han Dae-su

[Series Index]

7.  Han Dae-su [한대수]

Years of Activity: 1974-present (most recent album in 2006, most recent single in 2013)

Discography (Studio Albums Only)
The Long, Long Road [멀고 먼 길] (1974)

Rubber Shoes [고무신] (1975)

Infinity [무한대] (1989)

Amnesia [기억상실] (1990)

Conversation of Angels [천사들의 담화] (1992)

Age of Reason, Age of Treason [이성의 사대, 반역의 시대] (1999)

Eternal Sorrow (2000)

Agony [고민] (2002)

Hurt [상처] (2004)

Desire [욕망] (2006)

Representative Song:  Give Me Some Water [물 좀 주소], from The Long, Long Road (1974)

물 좀 주소

Give Me Some Water

물 좀 주소 물 좀 주소

Give me some water, give me some water

목마르요 물 좀 주소

I am thirsty, give me some water

물은 사랑이요 나의 목을 간질며

Water is love, tickling my throat

놀리면서 밖에 보내네

Teasing me, sending me out

아! 가겠소 난 가겠소

Oh I will go, I will go

저 언덕 위로 넘어가겠소

I will go over that hill

여행 도중에 처녀 만나본다면

In my travels, if I meet a girl

난 살겠소 같이 살겠소

I will live, I will live with her

물 좀 주소 물 좀 주소

Give me some water, give me some water

목마르요 물 좀 주소

I am thirsty, give me some water

그 비만 온다면 나는 다시 일어나리

If only that rain comes, I will get up again

아! 그러나 비는 안 오네

Ah, but the rain is not coming

Translation note:  Like his music, Han Dae-su's lyrics tend to be vague and abstract. All the words in the lyrics--water, hill, girl, coffee--are easy, but collectively they form a jumble from which many different meanings may be drawn. It is difficult to translate while doing justice to the deliberate indeterminacy of these words.

In 15 words or less:  K-pop's first hippie; a mad genius.

Maybe he should have been ranked higher because...  Is there any other artist in the history of Korean pop music who has a 40-year body of work that always stays at the cutting edge?

Maybe he should have been ranked lower because...   When was the last time his songs were popular? 20 years ago? 30 years ago?

Why is this artist important?

1968 was an important year in Korean pop music history, not the least because it was the year in which the 20-year-old Han Dae-su made his debut in Korea. Han was a young man, but with experience: growing up in New York, Han had already played in a garage band and obsessed over Elvis Presley. 

And young Han Dae-su would have his own Elvis moment: on a variety television show, Han Dae-su would play an acoustic guitar and a harmonica, swaying his long hair that would have done proud his hippie friends back in America. The collective head of the conservative Korean society exploded. Han's mother was so embarrassed of the way her son looked on TV that she broke down in tears. Letters flooded the TV station, demanding to know if Han Dae-su was a man or a woman. Some of the letters demanded that Han leave Korea immediately. 

That was the moment that Korea's counterculture began. Han Dae-su's music, while cutting-edge, was never extremely popular. It was avant-garde and subversive, thumbing its nose at the suffocating mainstream. The suffocation would come in many different forms. First it was the dictator Park Chung-hee, who decided that pop music was hurting Korea's national discipline, and began putting pop musicians in prison based on trumped-up drug charges. Then it was the stupid, cheap pop music that the mindless society always loves. And it was always his personal demons, the gnawing emptiness that led him to the bottles and his two broken marriages. 

His musical response was much like the opening of his signature song, Give Me Some Water--a jolting shock to the system, unexpectedly dropping his gravelly voice without any care for a conventional prelude. This attitude would continue to pervade his musical journey for the next four decades. Han's music searched both outwardly and inwardly: reaching far and wide for the new type of sound, while digging deep inside to give his music sensitivity and Korean-ness. 

Han Dae-su was never broadly popular, although some of his songs (most notably To the Land of Happiness [행복의 나라로]) did become iconic. Han's contribution, instead, was toward the underside of Korean pop music, the dark shade that allows forms to take shape in the light.

Interesting trivia:  Han Dae-su initially moved to the United States shortly after he was born because his father, a nuclear physicist, went to Cornell University to study in 1948. Seven years into his U.S. life, Han's father suddenly disappeared for ten years. When Han Dae-su finally found his father at age 17, Han's father was living in Long Island under a different name, married to a white woman and running a printing company. Although he recognized his family, he completely lost ability to speak Korean, knew nothing about nuclear physics and said nothing about what had happened in those ten years while he disappeared. Han Dae-su suspects that CIA brainwashed his father because his father came to possess important secrets regarding nuclear weapons.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.