Korean chopsticks : Have you ever been surprised by the wide Korean chopsticks made of metal as soon as you came to live in Korea? In particular, friends from Japan or China may not be able to use these chopsticks at first. Korea is the only country in the three Northeast Asian countries that uses metal chopsticks, and Korea is the only country that uses wide chopsticks.
Chopsticks are a widely used meal tool in Northeast and Southeast Asia, and have been made and used in accordance with the food culture where rice is the staple food, and there is no clear data on where and how it appeared because it is an old tool.
First of all, the longest record of chopsticks was when the Han Dynasty and the Chu Dynasty fought a war after the fall of the Qin Dynasty in China, and when Yeok-gi proposed to seal the kings of the six countries to revive the feudal system, Jang-ryang explained the problem of the strategy. If you go back a long time, it is said that Han Bijia also reported that King Zhu of the Shang Dynasty made chopsticks out of ivory.
Korea seems to have used chopsticks and spoons together since at least the Three Kingdoms period. While the spoon was also excavated from the Bronze Age of the Gojoseon Dynasty, chopsticks have not yet been excavated before the Three Kingdoms Period.
Until the middle of the Joseon Dynasty, it is said that the common people used only spoons, but if you look at the folk paintings drawn by Kim Hong-do, there are many evidence of using chopsticks, so it can be seen as regional and family characteristics.
Chopsticks culture has traditionally been the culture of aristocracy, and it is argued that it was recently established in the 18th century in the diet of the common people.
Some question the fact that the chopstick culture was traditionally enjoyed by the aristocracy. Given that spoons are more difficult to make than chopsticks, chopsticks fit the characteristics of the common people, and spoons are appropriate as items for the wealthy who need more sincerity, so it is a wrong argument to view chopsticks as aristocratic-centered items.
However, this mistakenly established the premise itself by mistaking that there must be a positive correlation between the difficulty of manufacturing goods and the main enjoyment class. Obviously, it is true that chopsticks can be made with only two branches, and spoons require sincerity. However, since chopsticks are much more difficult to use than spoons, they are rather aristocratic items in terms of difficulty in use. The aristocratic culture originates from relaxation, both east and west. It takes constant effort and time to learn and use chopsticks skillfully, but it can be understood without explaining who would have been in line with the culture of the common people, who were relaxed due to wealth and time. The difficulty of using chopsticks is too difficult to dismiss them as common people simply by the difficulty of manufacturing. If you’re not sure, try using chopsticks with the other hand of your hand. And above all, if chopsticks were such a simple thing to dismiss, why have chopsticks not become common since ancient times, regardless of the east and west? Therefore, it is easy to see that chopsticks are easier to make than spoons, which is not a sufficient basis to refute that chopsticks culture was not originally universal.
In fact, the difficulty of making spoons was completely different from those used by the aristocracy and the common people. Until the late Joseon Dynasty, spoons mainly used by the common people were made by cutting wood roughly, and it was mainly used by aristocrats and aristocrats that made them proud of smooth curved surfaces with metal. The reason why most of the spoon artifacts are well-made metal is that due to the nature of the aristocrats’ goods, the material could be preserved for hundreds of years, not wood. Most of the items used by ordinary people were wood, so if they are discarded, they will return to nature within decades. This is why it is difficult to study and prove the old common-class culture of most countries as well as the Korean Peninsula. On the other hand, however, considering that the common people tended to become popular as they gradually copied the culture of the nobles, both East and West, there is a possibility that it was made of wood that was easy to obtain, if not made of metal. In addition, it is presumed that these wooden chopsticks became common to farmers during the reign of King Yeongjo and King Jeongjo, so-called the Renaissance period of Korean history. Kim Hong-do’s painting, in which a farmer uses two branches like chopsticks, is also set in this period, and the mentioned above is also set in the 18th century and the late Joseon Dynasty.
In terms of language, it can be seen indirectly that chopsticks were not as important as spoons in Korean food culture. Unlike “spoon,” “chopsticks” is not a pure native language. The root of ‘spoon’ is ‘sul’, and all of them are native words along with ‘garak’. However, the root of “Chopsticks” is “jeo,” which is the origin of Chinese characters. Since the Three Kingdoms period, the aristocracy has formed a culture of the aristocracy by accepting the Chinese culture, which was an advanced country at the time, along with the existing unique culture of the Korean Peninsula, and this continued until the mid-Joseon period. In addition, considering the assumption that chopsticks themselves were aristocratic and that the common people generally maintained a spoon-centered diet until the end of the Joseon Dynasty, it can be confirmed once again that chopsticks culture was usually aristocratic in Korean history.
The main use of stainless steel metal chopsticks in Korea is related to the distribution process of chopsticks.
The theory that Korea uses metal chopsticks is as follows in non-academic or common sense. According to Food Beast, an overseas food site, the Baekje royal family used silver chopsticks to prevent toxicity, and this spread to the general public, and the reason why silver began to make iron chopsticks was because it was expensive. However, this theory is not true if cross-verified through relics. In terms of the proportion of relics, it can be inferred that most chopsticks were made of wood during the Three Kingdoms Period, because the number of chopsticks in the Three Kingdoms Period is only one-tenth that of spoons. Wooden chopsticks will rot. The same is true of relics from the Goryeo Dynasty, and most of the cases where chopsticks were excavated together are from the Joseon Dynasty.# In this respect, the theory of the origin of the Three Kingdoms period for metal chopsticks seems to be less convincing.
Stainless chopsticks appeared around the 1970s. Although Japan established a special steel factory on the Korean Peninsula in the 1940s, stainless steel chopsticks began to spread only after the second five-year economic development plan began to develop in 1972. Therefore, it can be seen that the widespread use of stainless steel tableware was largely influenced by the government that valued efficiency rather than the succession of tradition. However, there is a possibility that the reason stainless steel tableware could be easily settled was influenced by the perception that metal tableware represented by organic was high-end.
Currently, the three Northeast Asian countries (Korea, Japan, and China), which mainly use chopsticks, use various styles of chopsticks, and there are more people or scholars who investigate and study them according to each country’s history and culture.
Chopsticks play a very important role in Korean food culture.
First of all, you need chopsticks because many of the Korean foods are cut into small pieces or difficult to eat by hand. Also, if you use chopsticks, you can eat little by little, so you can feel more joy and satisfaction than eating big at once.
Also, chopsticks play a very important role in Korean culture. Using chopsticks means sharing rice balls with each other while talking, and it is often used in various events such as weddings, the fifteenth of lunar January, and Chuseok. Also, technical aspects of handling chopsticks are important, and it is also recognized as being polite to parents.
Therefore, chopsticks play a very important role in Korean food culture and are one of the most precious tableware for Koreans.
Now, let’s know about Korean chopsticks and enjoy traditional Korean food culture more!
