<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:garamond, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt">Hello all,<br><br>I am tardy with this, but spoons were commonly used in premodern Korea by folks of all status groups There is a brief record from 1604 that indicates that this was a habit of the ChosOn people in comparison to the Ming armies assisting with the earlier invasions (1592-98). Certainly the materials used to make spoons were reflective of status, but wood, brass, silver and so on were common. I can't speak of the 20th century, but for ChosOn and earlier, spoons were commonplace.<br><div><span><br></span></div><div>Best,</div><div><br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: garamond,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;">Michael Pettid<br></div> <div style="font-family: garamond, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div
style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div dir="ltr"> <hr size="1"> <font face="Arial" size="2"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Frank Hoffmann <hoffmann@koreanstudies.com><br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> koreanstudies@koreanstudies.com <br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Tuesday, September 10, 2013 5:47 PM<br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [KS] spoons<br> </font> </div> <div class="y_msg_container"><br>Hello Bill:<br><br>Seems nobody wants your wooden spoons. Not sure why so, as there are <br>several who know much better than me.<br><br>Here the little I can say about wooden spoons:<br>Other than what you imagine, I think Koreans did not, at least not <br>since the later colonial period, use wooden spoons at home. Maybe <br>wooden spoons were used for prisoners or in the army, but not <br>elsewhere. (If anyone
knows otherwise, please do post.) In KOREA spoons <br>were of metal, what metal depended on the social status of the families <br>and also the historic period we talk about. When you read descriptions <br>from older texts, 1910 or before, you can find some hints that wooden <br>spoons were used by the lower classes though: "Meals are served on low <br>tables, the family and the guests squatting on the floor, and wooden <br>spoons and chopsticks are used." (Constance J.D. Coulson, _Korea_, <br>London: A. and C. Black, 1910, p. 10.) Wooden spoons where also part of <br>Korea's funeral culture, used to prepare the dead for burial, for some <br>sort of ritual meal: see Im Kwŏn-t'aek's movie _Ch'ukche_ (1996) for <br>such a scene, if you have not seen it in actual life. That movie is <br>pretty good at depicting a traditional funeral: <br><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNXf_ibPc7o"
target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNXf_ibPc7o</a><br>Wooden spoons were and are of course also used in Buddhist monasteries.<br><br>In any case, you talk about the very late colonial period and <br>post-liberation period in North Korea. Of course did Koreans would <br>Koreans want to replace their spoons and other tools and utilities the <br>Japanese had confiscated during the war.<br><br><br>Frank<br><br>--------------------------------------<br>Frank Hoffmann<br><a href="http://koreanstudies.com/" target="_blank">http://koreanstudies.com</a><br><br></div> </div> </div> </div></body></html>