Londonderry News

In 1974, I was a wet-eared kid, fresh out of boot camp, and had just received my orders to head to South Korea, a mere 22-hour flight from Boston.   I was told it was the best kept secret in the Air Force – a tour of duty that promised all the excitement a 19-year-old guy could want.  It even lived up to that reputation, in a way that we didn’t expect, when we had a little incident on the DMZ – that quaint little “no man’s land” between South Korea and the communist “People’s Republic” of North Korea – which found us all wearing helmets and flak jackets one day.  Air Force guys aren’t used to that type of combat gear.

My job in Korea consisted of “eavesdropping” on our communist friends to the north, which is all I can say about that.  But when off-duty, the greatest benefit of my job was that I could speak the Korean language.  This helped me to communicate with the local people about a few more things than the typical GI could.  He was mostly interested in the “culture” of the bars, tailor shops, jewelry shops, and gift shops that typically spring up outside the front gate of most U.S. military bases in foreign countries.  Especially the bars.  I was looking for a bit more variety.   Well, I liked the bars too…

The Korean culture is a fascinating one.  Their dress, music, and customs were all exotic ventures for me.  At six feet tall, I liked being a giant among this comparably short population.  Except that any fifteen-year old Korean kid could have kicked the stuffing out of this giant.  Most that I met were Tae Kwon Do black belts.

The one thing I loved most about the country was its spicy food.  Anyone with a love of truly tasty, but unbelievably spicy cuisine, a cast iron stomach, and a strong set of bowels can really enjoy eating off the economy in Korea.  I did it for three years.  I also had dysentery for three years.

I submit that there’s nothing like a bowl of white rice and a chunk of kimchi to start the day right.  Kimchi is a staple of the Korean diet. Its basic ingredients consist of raw Chinese cabbage, ground red hot peppers, and a billion cloves of garlic.  Koreans eat it any time of day.  It’s left to ferment in huge ceramic jars, which are generally buried in the ground.  Not to worry though – there’s not an animal alive that would approach that for a meal.  Just one bite of kimchi sends the smell straight to your pores. You literally sweat the stuff – and everyone around you knows it.  Unless they’ve been indulging too.  Then it doesn’t matter.

Food vendors constantly roamed the roads throughout this sleepy little country village of rice paddies, which had become a financial magnet over the years, after the U.S. Air Force set down roots.  These street vendors were always older women with heavily creased faces, dressed in traditional Korean garb.  They eked out a meager living by pushing their food carts around town every day of their lives.  So we liked to support them.  No ‘Ugly Americans’ in my crowd.  We would buy huge mussels from them, steamed in the shell over a charcoal grill, swimming in one of their many spicy sauces.  Those mussels went down easy.  They came out easy too.

One day, on a dare, a few of us were challenged to partake of the delicacy of sea slugs, fresh from the Korean Sea.  Another street vendor specialty, these little buggers were served live and the mamasan had to constantly line them up as they tried to escape from the chopping block of her cart.  Can’t have an unruly food display, ya know.  Sea slugs were a unique delicacy.  They came with no spicy sauces.   You ate them raw, moving parts and all.  That day, we swallowed really hard before downing two each.   And we continued to swallow for many minutes afterwards, just to make sure they weren’t trying to crawl back up our throats.  I only took that dare once.  And survived.  I made five bucks on the bet.

One of my favorite “restaurants” (if you can call a run-down cement block shack with no running water a restaurant) was the local mokoli house.  Mokoli is a chalky fermented liquor, which looks an awful lot like the brown water that exits your washing machine after a load of wash.  It was a staple of the “after work” crowd, who trudged into the mokoli house each day, still wreaking of the rice paddies where they toiled from dawn to dusk.  I would occasionally join them for a little mokoli and their favorite dish – raw liver, chopped into squares, dipped in sesame oil and sprinkled with sea salt.  Call me crazy, but it was delicious.  They were amazed to see an American in their mokoli house, especially one who could speak their language and would eat their foods.  To this day, when we pull the little bag of gizzards out of the Thanksgiving turkey, I’ll always take the liver, dip it in sesame oil and salt, and chow it down. My rice paddy homies would be proud.  My doctor would be appalled.  My family turns away.

The local food market also held a wealth of unique Korean foods.  The market was an outside bazaar, its air filled with a confusing combination of smells – some food, some not.  It included spices, vegetables, cooked meat, brackish water, dung, and of, course, kimchi.  I never tried the dog, thank you.  That just seemed a bit over the edge, even if it is considered a delicacy in the Land of the Morning Calm.  On occasion, I’d eat the fish which they cooked whole, although there’s something a bit disconcerting about a fish eye staring up at you from your plate, as you pull the edible flesh off its bones.  The chicken was as fresh as it came, pulled squawking from the pen, slaughtered, plucked and deep fried as you waited.  No extra charge for the show.

The only food I didn’t really care for was the tofu.  It was concocted in large dishpan-size containers and when cut up, looked like bars of soggy, jiggling soap.  It had absolutely no taste – and no place, in a country full of hot, spicy foods.

Today, I’m content to roam the aisles at Shaw’s, seeking out bland American foods that are gentler on my digestive tract.  And if I get a hankering for spicy Korean food, I can always pick up a fresh slab of liver and some sesame oil.  Or mix up a batch of kimchi and bury it in the back yard.  That’ll keep the coyotes away.

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