[KS] Re: A chopsticks question

[jyu862 at casbah.acns.nwu.edu]

Although not directly related to this thread, this might be of interest.
Among China, Japan and Korea, only Korea appears to place emphasis on the
use of the spoon for eating. Among many Korean families, it is still
considered more proper to eat rice with a spoon rather than with a
chopstick. Eating with gusto is considered to bring good fortune, and in
Korea, eating with gusto is eating with a spoon. Additionally, the most
common Korean foods (at daily meals) have to be eaten with a spoon -- the
stews and soups and spontaneous bibimbap or bokkembap made of leftovers.
The main eating utensil for many Koreans is the spoon, not the chopstick.

In contrast, both Chinese and Japanese prefer to eat rice with chopsticks.
There is even a popular variety of rice which proclaims on its packaging:
"You are glad to be Japanese. This is rice that deserves to be eaten with
chopsticks." Japanese use spoons so infrequently that there is no place for
it at a standard table and restaurants do not have spoons available as a
matter of course.

So  the suggestion that chopsticks might be the latecomer in Korean eating
tools is worth exploring. 

Yuh Ji-Yeon

Original Message:
-----------------
From: Charlotte Horlyck c.horlyck at vam.ac.uk
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 11:24:15 +0000
To: Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
Subject: Re: [KS] Re: A chopsticks question


There are several examples of bronze chopsticks having been found in Korean
graves. One of the earliest examples I have come across are two sets of
bronze chopsticks excavated from the Paekche tomb of King Munyong dating to
the 6th century AD. The chopsticks were found together with three bronze
spoons. With their wide, nearly fan-shaped handles, the bronze spoons are
of a different shape than the ones used today. The chopsticks seem to be
devoid of any decoration and measure around 18.cm.
 
Bronze chopsticks are also found in graves of the Koryo period, but are not
as common as bronze spoons. It is more common to find only a bronze spoon
in a grave as opposed to a set of chopsticks placed together with a bronze
spoon. The chopsticks are mostly plain and without decoration as opposed to
the spoons which often have a simple incised decoration. Bronze chopsticks
are more common in graves of the Choson period, where they appear together
with spoons as sets. Judging from the archaeological material available to
us today, the use of chopsticks may not have become widespread until the
beginning of the Choson period, but more evidence needs to be gathered to
support this initial, and somewhat hasty, assumption.  

Organic material does not survive well, if at all, in Korean graves, and it
is therefore not possible to assess whether chopsticks of organic materials
were palced in graves.   

Regards
Charlotte Horlyck
Curator of Korean Art
Victoria and Albert Museum
London, UK. 
>>> Brother Anthony <anthony at ccs.sogang.ac.kr> 02/21 1:02 am >>>
Someone working in a museum of popular culture should be consulted. It is
clear from any visit
to Korean antique shops that chopsticks made of metal were widespread
(standard? universal?) in
pre-modern Korea and I would imagine that one reason would have been their
durability at a time
when an awful lot of people had virtually no money with which to keep
buying new ones. But I
think they might have been favored even among the richer classes in the
context of the
Confucian aesthetics of frugal simplicity that underlie the use of
undecorated white pottery
etc. Lacquered wood or ivory chopsticks (Japan and China) were presumably
not designed
originally for the use of the laboring classes. I have a feeling that metal
chopsticks are used
in the royal memorial rituals at Chongmyo. On the other hand, monks today
often eat out of
lacquered wood bowls using lacquered wood chopsticks / spoons but I do not
know how ancient
that is (obviously metal chopsticks would not be good for lacquered wood).

The discussion ought perhaps to include the question of when and why
Koreans started to use
spoons? They are not found at all in Japanese tradition, I think, and the
Chinese ladle-like
porcelain (plastic) spoon is quite a different kind of object. 

An Sonjae / Br Anthony
Sogang University, Seoul





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