[KS] spoons

Frank Hoffmann hoffmann at koreanstudies.com
Tue Sep 10 17:47:28 EDT 2013


Hello Bill:

Seems nobody wants your wooden spoons. Not sure why so, as there are 
several who know much better than me.

Here the little I can say about wooden spoons:
Other than what you imagine, I think Koreans did not, at least not 
since the later colonial period, use wooden spoons at home. Maybe 
wooden spoons were used for prisoners or in the army, but not 
elsewhere. (If anyone knows otherwise, please do post.) In KOREA spoons 
were of metal, what metal depended on the social status of the families 
and also the historic period we talk about. When you read descriptions 
from older texts, 1910 or before, you can find some hints that wooden 
spoons were used by the lower classes though: "Meals are served on low 
tables, the family and the guests squatting on the floor, and wooden 
spoons and chopsticks are used." (Constance J.D. Coulson, _Korea_, 
London: A. and C. Black, 1910, p. 10.) Wooden spoons where also part of 
Korea's funeral culture, used to prepare the dead for burial, for some 
sort of ritual meal: see Im Kwŏn-t'aek's movie _Ch'ukche_ (1996) for 
such a scene, if you have not seen it in actual life. That movie is 
pretty good at depicting a traditional funeral:  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNXf_ibPc7o
Wooden spoons were and are of course also used in Buddhist monasteries.

In any case, you talk about the very late colonial period and 
post-liberation period in North Korea. Of course did Koreans would 
Koreans want to replace their spoons and other tools and utilities the 
Japanese had confiscated during the war.


Frank

--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreanstudies.com


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