In the spirit of The Amateur Gourmet, I threw together a musical number for the SeoulPodcast about the beef hysteria.

[Click here for lyrics]

Trouble in Han River City

I just received my copy of the interview I had last month with Korea Agra Food, which is a trade journal that promotes Korean food.  Here are some hi res photos I took of the article.  I have larger versions of these photos in my Flickr account, if it’s too hard to read here.

This just raises my hackles.  I’m sorry for being political again on a food blog, but sometimes you can’t separate food and politics.  And I think Americans need to know, especially my fellow progressives commenting on this issue, what is behind the mad cow hysteria in South Korea.

Now, let me point out ahead of time.  I am far from being a conservative pundit.  I used to co-produce the liberal Thom Hartmann Program, which now is the flagship show on the progressive Air America Radio network.  So I’m basically as left wing as you can get.  This is why it troubles me when news items come into my mailbox from progressive rags to NYT’s Paul Krugman, saying that the mad cow protesters have legitimate issues and are aware of what’s going on in the American beef industry.

They don’t.

Let me start with the program that sparked it all, “PD Diary.” In Korea, it’s the closest thing it has to a “60 Minutes” or “20/20.” Yet it has the journalistic integrity of “A Current Affair” during the Bill O’Reilly era.

The reason that the Korean population got so energized and riled up and considered themselves “Mad Cow Ph. D.s” was the result of an episode the program aired in April, which I watched myself and couldn’t believe the trash they were shoving down the Korean public’s collective throats.  If this program didn’t scare the poo out of the Korean public, they likely wouldn’t have cared so much.

The thing is, there aren’t many professional checks and balances in the Korean media.  They are used to making claims without citing sources.  If they wish it to be true then it must be true.  And they twist facts and blatantly lie and mislabel in their news programs because–they can.  There are no professional repercussions.  There are no watchdog groups.  There is little domestic competition challenging them on their claims.

The only option in South Korea is for the government to step in.  They are suing MBC and “PD Diary” using those famous libel laws that I know all too well.  They are basing their suit on multiple fabrications in the episode:

• They showed video of a downer cow, likely caused from being sick and weak from living in a feed lot, and said it was a mad cow.
• They claimed that Koreans are more likely to develop the human variant of mad cow because of a researcher’s paper.  The researcher himself said that the program distorted his thesis.
• They claimed that a woman in Virginia died from mad cow, when her mother and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said she hadn’t.

So rather than doing the adult thing and admitting their errors, they are relying on the typical childish behavior of Korean management by blaming their inferiors.  You know, it’s the equivalent to when a child hits another child, and when you scold him, he says, “Well, she made me do it.”

This JoongAng Daily piece details “PD Diary’s” sleazy defense of themselves.  Let’s take it apart.

It starts off with “PD Diary” blaming its errors on bad translation.  The translator responded.

“So, MBC is now blaming translators?” Jeong wrote yesterday afternoon in one of her postings.

“While I was checking the translation, I told the producers repeatedly and strongly that linking a downer cow and mad cow disease is a distortion. Those controversial parts [were not my translation] but later selected by the producers.”

Yes, I don’t see how a downer cow can be mistranslated as BSE-infected cow, considering “BSE” is the same in English and Korean.  It just didn’t occur to the producers that when they blamed the translator, the translator would point out the obvious.  But in the same typical style of “PD Diary,” they stuck to what they BELIEVED was true rather than what WAS true.

However, the production team behind the show stuck to its translation line of defense. “We regret that we left room for misunderstanding because we didn’t provide word-by-word translation,” the program makers said.

Regarding the woman in Virginia who DIDN’T die from mad cow disease:

The report’s subtitles showed her mother as saying that “human mad cow disease” had caused the American patient’s death.

The term the mother had actually used was CJD or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, not vCJD.

Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is commonly known as the human form of mad cow disease.

PD Diary said Tuesday that “we thought Vinson’s mother, who had no professional medical knowledge, was confused about the two terms.”

That is some primo grade A arrogance.  These are the people who report fan death as fact, and they believe that the mother was “confused” about what caused her daughter’s death??

They are stuck on that neo-Confucian idea that if a person is not a certified M.D. she just doesn’t know what she’s talking about.  And I assume the producers themselves are peer reviewed medical scholars, right?

Arrogance.

Oh, and here’s the kicker:

PD Diary also claimed Tuesday that the host of the show made a simple slip of tongue when he called a downer cow “a cow suspected of being infected with mad cow disease.”

Its earlier translation of “dairy cow” as “mad cow disease-infected cow” was not a poor translation, but a translation with interpretation, the program argued.

Yes, because I regularly made the slip of the tongue when I go out to eat.  I mean to say, “Let’s have some beef galbi.”

Instead I slip and say, “Let’s have some mad cow disease-infected galbi.”

It’s just a simple slip of the tongue.  Who woulda thought it was a big deal?  I confuse the words “dairy cow” with “mad cow disease-infected cow” all the time.

Then when all else failed, they took to political labeling to discredit arguments against them.

“[Conservative media] are not looking into the substance, and they are just picking on our translation to criticize us,” PD Diary said Tuesday.

Well, buddy, I ain’t no conservative media.  You can count on that.  I believe in truth in advertising and journalism.  And if you are saying that the sunshine shone on your lies and lazy journalism are the products of the “conservative media,” then you are implying that liberals (like me) take the truth casually in order to make a point.

I’m sorry.  Where I come from, we call that Fox News.

Restaurants in Korea are getting a taste of what expats receive on an annual basis: sweeping changes of rules done quickly with little organization and thought and no guidelines on implementing them.

They’re upset and baffled by the new regulation requiring them to label the origin of beef on each menu item and side dish.  Sometimes restaurants use beef or parts in their soups and what not from different countries, depending on the market price that week.  So that means they have to post a new sign or change their menu each time Chilean beef is a better deal than Australian beef and vice versa.

I understand their frustration.  At first, I thought, “So what’s the big deal,” but, yeah, after working in restaurants and the myriad of things to take care of just to stay afloat, I can see how this would be annoying, especially since no specific guidelines have been put out on these regulations which take effect next week.

Besides, it’s another way to ensure that even though the market is opening for American beef, it sure ain’t gonna get much footing here.

WARNING, RANT COMING

On another note, I stated on the podcast last night the stupidity of the protesters, but not for the same reasons a lot are criticizing them for.

Yes, American beef has its issues.  Compared to the real problems American beef has, BSE is low on my priority list.  I’m more worried about e. coli, antibiotics and hormones.

Instead of concentrating on the REAL problems, the protesters latched on the phantom issue of 30-month-old cows.  So, this is what South Korea did.  They re-opened negotiations, which hurt them internationally as a trustworthy trading partner.  I mean, who wants to negotiate and sign contracts with a country that’s going to alter the contract after it’s signed?  For anyone who’s worked in Korea for a while, you know that this practice is as common as eating kimchi for breakfast.

When they re-opened negotiations, they insisted on restricting American beef imports to cows younger than 30 months, as if cows over 30 months are a bigger risk.  I think it’s another one of those weird superstitions they latched on to, similar to the previous stipulation that only boneless beef could come in, thinking that a brain disease was present only in cow bones.

The American side, obviously, was surprised.

“You’re re-opening negotiations–hurting your international prestige–for THIS??  Okay, whatever, no problem.”

The Americans didn’t give a shit.  Thirty-month-old beef is not a big deal to change.  But the Korean side took it as a humongous victory over Big Bad America.  They bragged how they brought America down on its knees for — um, cattle less than 30 months old.

Now, if any of the protesters or anyone in government had any critical thinking skills, you know, better than the critical thinking skills that believe in fan death, and cared about the real health of their population, they would have used the body blow to their interntational standing to negotiate the following two points:

1. Label Grass or Grain. This is done voluntarily by some producers in America.  Label whether a cow was raised naturally on grass or finished in a grain lot.  I prefer not to eat grain-fed beef because that’s where most of our bad beef comes from.  First of all, a cow’s stomach is not designed to digest corn.  Combine this with the overcrowding at grain lots, and you have a lot of sick cows with rampant diahrrea.  To combat this, feed lots inject the cows with antibiotics.  And we know what happens when antibiotics are treated as casual drugs–stronger resistant bacterial mutations emerge.  So, I’m not much for doped up cattle slipping and sliding through diahrrea all day.  Not too appetizing.

2. Slow down the production line. I think I read somewhere that when beef is prepared for the European Union in slaughterhouses, they slow down the production line per EU regulations.  American slaughterhouses are notorious for being as hurried as a Korean Chinese take-out guy on a motorscooter.  These superfast kill, drain, gut and quarter lines make it difficult to avoid accidents, such as dismemberment of humans and poop getting into the food supply.  As a side note, that is why irradiation is such an issue in the government and why the food industry is behind it.  Rather than clean up their act, they’d rather just sterilize dirty food.  I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have no poo in my food than sterilized poo.  So anyway, the Korean government could have demanded that production lines slow down when processing meat for Korea.

So that, basically, is why the protesters were stupid.

This blog started a couple of months ago.  It’s picture and recipe heavy.  Looks good.

[A FOOD JOURNEY IN KOREA]

I watched the first episode of Shikgaek Tuesday night.  I’ll keep watching it for the food, even though it suffers from the same awkwardness and, well, either the show misses some cogent points, or I’m missing them.

The Joshing Gnome wrote a post about it:

Shikgaek is dumb

Shikgaek (식객) is, for those of you who don’t know, was originally a very popular and pretty entertaining comic book about Korean food.  It was sort of the Korean version of the Japanese wine comic Drops of God.  Incidentally, the guy who wrote Shikgaek was originally going to write a comic about wine, but my old nemesis Rhie Won-bok beat him to the punch.  Then he briefly considered doing a comic about soju but it turns our there’s already a sixty-part series about soju called “The Devil’s Piss“.

Anyway, the comic book, I feel I should underscore, is not bad.  The television show, however, is likely to become very bad as it goes on.

In tonight’s episode there were already two scenes of white people marveling as the same phonetic English speaking chef explains about the food.  ‘This idge called ddeok.  It idge a rice cake.  It idge a Ko-ree-an traditional pood.’

White guy: ‘What’s this on top’

‘Dat idge a jujube’

White people (to each other): ‘Ooh, Aah.’

But here’s the scene that killed me.  The old chef master gets some kind of special fish fresh from the seashore and brings it into his kitchen.  There are about twenty young chefs doing nothing but watching as the old man proceeds to choose a knife out of a collection of large knives and . . .

He cuts the fish into four pieces.  The young chefs are agog.  He then lifts the lid off a pot of light brown broth and puts the fish in the pot.  Then he sprinkles a little salt in. Then he sprinkles some sliced red and green pepper on top.  Then he puts the lid on and leaves.  All the young chefs are in awe at this.

Then charisma-free heartthrob Kim Rae-won takes out a ladle and takes a sip of the broth.  The look on his face is one of transcendent awe.  It’s like he’s looking into the light show from the end of 2001.  Or he hates it.  It was not clear to me at the time.  I thought he was going to say ‘The old man is losing his touch, watch me fix this train wreck.’ and proceed to become the ‘Best Chef’ of the show’s English title.  Instead he passes the ladle to English explanation guy and before he could phonetically say ‘In duh Choseon dynasuh-ty . . .’ he too was marveling at the genius that was essentially the same stuff people eat all the time except a guy at a really expensive restaurant had made it.  I imagined how hard it must be to convey the awesome power of food that is a) not as tasty as regular everyday food and b) gallingly the same as regular everyday food.

ZenKimchi Joe, I know you said you’re going to watch this show, but do yourself a favor and just read the comic.

Update:  I watched the rest of the episode and I changed my mind.  I will watch this show, if only because it reminds me so very much of the episode of Futurama where Bender tried to become the Iron Chef.  Except Kim Rae-won is more mechanical than Bender.

Here was my response:

I watched that episode and was baffled by those two scenes myself. I cringed at the English scene. Chefs don’t come to a table to give people dictionary definitions of what they’re eating. They’re expected to tell a story or the process behind the food to enhance the diners’ enjoyment. I was expecting him to go on saying, “This is plate. This is cup. This is rice. Korea eat rice.”

The fish scene–thanks for helping me figure out I wasn’t crazy for missing the significance. These past two weeks, I myself have been working on my fish cleaning and filleting techniques to make some simple Western fish dishes. But Mr. Old Dude went in there, scaled the fish and just hacked it into four parts the same way Asians do chicken. There’s no thought given to the anatomy of the animal. Just hack it to pieces. Dunked it in the pot with some salt.

Now, what was this magical flavor?

In fact, the fish hadn’t been in the pot long enough to do ANYTHING before Pretty Boy Chef tasted it and gave the spoon to Jude Law Chef. And even if it tastes amazing, it would be because of the quality of the fish, not the knife skills of Jason Voorhees.

Okay, help me figure out this part because my Korean is not good enough to follow easily, and The Woman doesn’t explain things to me when she’s watching TV.

Old Dude Chef and Pretty Boy Chef are hunting for this special line-caught fish. They finally find it. Pretty Boy Chef then goes and gets tossaway fish from some ajummas.

A few scenes later, he’s staying up all night perfecting a fish soup. Was he using those same throwaway fish? And by manipulating some spices (I remember him listing the ingredients), he made this jaw-dropping soup?

What’s the message here?

Good ingredients don’t matter because you can always cover it up with spices?

Nonetheless, the production values looked slightly better than a lot of the dramas. And I’m really watching it for the food, not the plot. If I learn something about the history of some dishes or why certain foods are special it’ll be worth sitting through the stiff awkward scenes with foreigners. And wasn’t that the most lifeless lawn party?

I’ve shelled out the money and set up a Flickr account.  For weeks I have been uploading and organizing every single picture I’ve ever taken in Korea.

Seriously, it’s very organized–by restaurant, by food type, by month.

I hope you can use this as a one-stop food porn source when it comes to Korean food.  I’m trying to categorize as much food as I can.  It is also proof that I have a major backlog of entries for the Journal.  There are a lot of pictures in there that I have yet to write about.

Enjoy.

[From my ExPat Living article in The Korea Herald on June 3, 2008]

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Jetsetters regularly talk about the exotic and even risky foods they had eaten while on adventures. They bandy words like “durian,” “hákarl” and “balut” as badges of honor. They boast about eating fugu in Japan, the blowfish with tetrodotoxin poison, for which there’s no known antidote. Rural Haitian voodoo bokors sometimes use the poison to make “zombies.”

That’s what I call good eating. Yet one doesn’t need to go to Japan to try this culinary equivalent of base jumping. It’s common in Korea. Unlike Japan, it’s not limited to sashimi and bland soups. Korea uses blowfish, called “bok,” in traditional Korean dishes as well as sliced raw.

A new restaurant specializing in bok kalguksu has opened at the base of a hillside in the suburban city of Anyang. The restaurant sits far from major thoroughfares and requires a special journey, as it’s the only business in the area and the last one before the road winds up the mountain, passing four gorgeous Buddhist temples. To get there from Beomgye Station, take the number 7 local bus to Imgok Jugong Apartments, or from Anyang Station, take a local 3 or 3-1 bus to the same place, the end of the route for both buses. Follow the road forking left past a temple, and the restaurant, Bok Sarang Guksu Sarang (“I Love Blowfish, I Love Noodle Soup”) is on the left.

Like Japan, Korea takes blowfish preparation seriously. The government stringently instills safeguards and proper training and licensing for chefs. Only a handful of people actually die from eating blowfish, mostly from preparing it at home or on a fishing boat.

The taste itself is light. There are stories that people feel a tingling sensation from small doses of poison, but I believe that’s some placebo effect. I’ve never felt anything from eating blowfish. The creature is such a cherished royalty that the ingredients surrounding it are all worthy of acclaim.

The side dishes shout for attention. No “afterthought” side dish exists, where one nibbles only because he’s waiting for his food to cook. The kimchi is smooth and buttery. A tart marinated muchim salad with bok begs for rice to balance its intensity. The fried bok won the prize as the best side dish. I think the chefs took clouds, battered them and fried them.

The Bok Kalguksu is the star. It’s boiled with fresh pungent mountain herbs and seasonal vegetables. Dip the steaming delicate meat in soy sauce and let it melt in your mouth. After you finish a good many fish and veggies, some handcut noodles are thrown in. These are not factory-made noodles. Each one has a different width, and the homemade freshness shines when slipping the noodles in your mouth and chewing.

The bok comes in a few variations, from a 7,000 won personal bowl of kalguksu, to a spicy mae-untang, to a big community shabu shabu. It’s well worth the trip. Don’t be scared of the blowfish. It won’t kill you. It will only give you pleasure—and a few cocktail party stories.

More pics are on the new ZenKimchi Flickr account.

“Sikgaek,” a drama about the culinary rivalry between two chef stepbrothers, will start airing on SBS on June 16th.  I’ve seen previews of this one, and despite my general revulsion of the genre, I plan to sit down and watch it.  I never got around to watching the big culinary drama “Dae Jang Geum” (”Jewel in the Palace”), which aired in 2003 and brought awareness to Korean court cuisine.  So I’ll just watch this one.  It’s supposed to deal a lot more with common everyday foods and look into the lives of farmers and fishermen and how the food makes it to the table.  I find stuff like that fascinating.

If the plot sounds familiar it’s based on a comic in Korea, and it already spawned a movie last year, “Le Grand Chef.”

My friend Chris Wright sent me this.  W Seoul Walkerhill has come up with the 180,000 won W “X” burger.  It’s Australian Wagyu beef with some big ass lobes of foie gras, black truffles and lobster tail served on a brioche bun.

This whole luxury burger thing started a while back with Daniel Boulud’s DB Burger in France.  The Korea Times article linked above said that it signified a trend in the polarization in Korea’s economy.  Well, maybe.  Usually these things are press-grabbing stunts, and people rarely order them.

Nonetheless, the ZenKimchi Korean Food Journal is accepting donations for a research trip.