Trying to get
vegetarian food in Korea can be quite a struggle. David, a friend of
ours who used to live in South Korea, told us that his Korean friend
would have to go as far as to claim she could die for eating meat in
order to be served fully vegetarian meals. We didn't push it that far
though. First we tried to have the sentence “we don't eat meat”, which
worked well in Beijing, written down in Korean, but our
host claimed not to know the sign (or then he didn't understand
the question). So I looked up “I am a vegetarian” in Korean on
the internet, and wrote it down according to my best skill. Judging
from the response we got at restaurants, however, the text might as
well have said “Give me all your money”.
Luckily, we do eat
seafood. When I realised to bring this also to our host's knowing, he
seemed overjoyed (apparently the vegetarian issue had troubled him
too), and the next morning our breakfast table was full of delicacies
(the “Korean” breakfast):
- rice
- soy sauce
- seaweed sheets
- pickled salted eel
- dried shrimp (extremely salty)
- 2 kinds of pickled octopus (chili & garlic-chili)
- Korean fish stew (Yumm!)
- miso-style soup
- lukewarm water
- tea
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