Sachultang!!!

This week's topic is about Korean food, and I am going to post several entries about it, because I love Korean food, or just food in general... don't you? I mean, look at this:

fig.1 Korean side dishes

Sorry I made you hungry guys~ but let's get to the main topic.

Years ago, I use to watch Girls' Generation's Hello Baby (by KBS TV), the variety show every Girls' Generation fan knows. I enjoyed it so much, and it is still one of my favorite variety shows. I remember when I was watching one of the episodes, the members were teasing their American-born member Tiffany because her Korean language skill is still lacking. Here is the clip:

If you click on the image up there you can watch the clip with English subtitle. So basically Tiffany (the one with short hair who keeps asking) asked the other members what is sachultang. The other members teased her by saying that sachultang means soup with 4 bars of iron in it (Sa(사) = 4, Chul(철) = iron, Tang(탕) = soup). She seemed to not believe it at first, but then she asked when do people eat the soup, and the members answered "The first ten days and the last ten days of midsummer heat". She seemed to have believed it at first, but then the members started saying weird things such as "That's why if you exercise and get tired, you shave off iron from an iron bar and eat it". She then realized that they were all teasing her.

After watching the clip, I was very curious about sachultang, and so I asked my Korean friends, but they did not know about it and ended up searching it on the internet. And so I thought, "Is it not common to eat sachultang in Korea?"

Sachultang, or Boshintang, as most people call it, is a kind of soup with dog meat inside of it. I know it might sound weird to you, but it is true. Sachultang is believed to have the ability to increase virility (manhood/manliness). It is also a traditional dish with a very long history. A wall painting in the Goguryeo tombs complex depicts a slaughtered dog in a storehouse. Also in 1816, Jeong Hak-Yu, the son of a famous politician and scholar of Joseon dynasty wrote a poem called Nongwollyeonga, which describes that families often bring dog meat soup to their parents in August. This shows that dog meat consumption had been a popular thing since long time ago.

fig.2 Boshintang

But nowadays, people from both inside and outside of Korea are protesting the dog meat consumption, with the reason that "dogs are human's closest friends". As someone who has never have a dog as a pet and as someone who does not think dogs exclusively as humans' only animal friends, I think the fact that people are protesting the consumption of dog meat for the reason mentioned above is quite wrong. I believe every animal has its own mind and they have feelings too, not only dogs. And the consumption of dog meat has been a part of Korean food culture since long time ago, even though it is not a significantly big part. I believe that people who eat dog meat should not mind others' opinions and continue to enjoy their meals.

Even though it is NOT illegal to consume dog meat in Korea, many younger people here do not consume dog meat, at least not on a constant basis. This shows how the view of people on dog meat consumption has become, and shows that Korea is globalized not only in Science and Technology but also the cultural shift towards something more 'westernized'. Well, what do you think about the consumption of dog meat? Should Koreans keep this cultural habit or should they throw it away?

Irfan Rulianto