Cultural note perfects Korean cuisine on Japanese table

By Chung Joo-won TOKYO, March 28 (Yonhap) -- There are more than enough reasons for the Japanese to love Korean food, but nothing touches deeper than the cultural note of the cuisine, says Cho Sun-ok, the "Korean food missionary in Japan." "When I attend public events and ceremonies as a Korean culinary lecturer, I always show up in full hanbok attire and hairstyle," Cho said in her interview with Yonhap in downtown Tokyo on Monday. To the South Korean virtuoso, it is the cultural note, story and image of the server that first reach the Japanese guests and students. Then comes the actual food. Cho just returned from a culinary event at a Japanese traditional shrine in Koma, where she introduced the art of food fermentation from Korea's ancient kingdom of Koguryo (37 B.C. to A.D. 668) to Japanese businesspeople, politicians and culinary specialists. "One of the dishes served in today's lecture was hongeo (thornback fish), fermented for seven days. I told them not to force themselves to finish it, because even many Korean grown-ups are daunted by the plate's odor. I was surprised to see my Japanese guests finish it. This would not be possible if they were not intrigued by the historical background and Korean gastronomy beforehand." Herein lies the wonder of the cultural note of Korean dishes -- generally, most local Koreans have hard time swallowing this nose-pinching fish after it passes three days of fermentation, although its taste and nutrition becomes richer. Her daily schedule is packed with lecturing and business consulting, but she hardly says no to invitations from Japanese schools to teach Korean food. Besides teaching, she is a celebrated television persona in cooking, as well. By doing so, she believes she can share the pleasure of Korean culture with Japanese people from all walks of life. "Even the kids who think school is boring beam with curiosity when I tell stories of Korean culture and food wearing traditional Korean costume. They are particularly excited when I tell them Korea is very close from here, only two hours or so from Japan." Cho has run a Korean culinary school under her name in Koreatown near Shinjuku, Tokyo, for more than a decade. During these years, she has turned more than 1,000 Japanese chefs and gastronomes into Korean culinary experts. Her culinary name is better known in Japan than in Korea -- few people are aware that the delicate ddeok cake served at the wedding of legendary South Korean football player Park Ji-sung was done by this soft-voiced lady. The Korean food boom in Japan did not start until the launch of Korean hit drama "Winter Sonata" in 2002, the Korean culinary guru recalled. The drama's lead actor Bae Yong-joon, a.k.a. "Yon-sama" in Japan, has captivated the hearts of countless Japanese women. But the actor's key achievement is his role in opening the gate to Korean culture in the island country. "Actor Bae Yong-joon is a celebrity who is subject to all sorts of criticisms. But I feel upset whenever I hear someone speak ill of Bae, for all the things he achieved here. He has changed the Japanese perception of Korean food culture from 'kimchi-stinky' into desirable, healthy and high-end," Cho said. She picked herself as one of the many Korean professionals who owed cultural support from Bae. She did not dream of becoming a culinary master from the beginning. The career was a path that came so natural to Cho. Born in Gimje, a small town southwest of Seoul, Cho came to Japan to study Japanese. She went to school and had part-time jobs like any ordinary students. Then she fell in love with a Japanese man and married him, her biggest supporter of her career in spreading Korean cuisine in Japan. Out of her affection for beautifying massage, Cho opened an aesthetic salon. The more she worked in the aesthetic business, the more she believed in "good eating," which she called the most basic way to lasting beauty. This is when Cho, in her mid-twenties, began to specialize in Korean medicinal food. It was not easy for a young lady like Cho to learn cooking among aged apprentices, according to Cho. But she faithfully stuck to the traditional golden rule of Korean apprenticeship, "three years mute, three years deaf," meaning that unconditional obedience without complaint leads to mastership. In her late 20s, she began her career in the restaurant business. She opened the ddeok cafe "Baram" and high-end Korean traditional restaurant "Cheonok" in Ebis, a wealthy neighborhood in southwestern Tokyo, which turned out enormously successful. Cheonok was frequented by a number of you-know-who politicians and business tycoons of Japan. "Some friends said I should consider becoming a lobbyist, because I have connected many prominent businessmen. But I clearly knew that my vocation was within the culinary world." While running her businesses, she began teaching Korean cooking classes for ddeok and other Korean dishes for locals. "Most Japanese customers know me only as a ddeok specialist. In fact, I cover a wide variety of different cuisines, such as Korean, Japanese, Italian and much more. This is not because I wanted to specialize in all of these cuisines, but because mastering one cuisine requires comparative understanding of all cuisines." She said her intimacy of both Korean and Japanese food was among the biggest factors of her success in her culinary and food consulting career in Japan. After her culinary class in Ebis, she opened another cooking studio in Koreatown, which she runs until today. "I wanted to reach locals outside the wealthy boundary of Ebis. But running two studios and restaurants at the same time was so physically exhausting that I had three car accidents in two months," she said. Then she closed down the restaurant and Ebis studio to concentrate on the Shinjuku studio in Koreatown. In the Shinjuku studio, she has also taught Japanese cooking classes for Korean chefs so that passionate Korean chefs who did not have proficiency in Japan and Japanese culture would come to Cho to learn authentic Japanese cuisine -- a true bridge between the two culinary worlds. In the several years since she quit the restaurant business, she has faced countless offers to re-open, but she did not waver. Her husband would tell her that her personality was more suitable for a culinary researcher-lecturer, rather than a businesswoman. Her consent did not change after she gave birth to her only daughter, who recently turned nine. "Only recently, I have become a little more serious about returning to the restaurant business. But I am not sure if I can manage the hectic life of a restaurant owner, running to the market places at the break of dawn and checking the freshness of every ingredient at every minute of the day," the loving mother said. While busying herself with teaching and consulting, this year marks an important milestone for Cho, with her entrance to the manufactured food market under the wing of a Japanese retail business. Cho is currently preparing a new recipe for a partnership with Ichiriki, a giant Japanese nabe restaurant chain. "I would offer recipe consultations to businesses 'behind the scene,' but with Ichiriki, I am willing to take a step further with product launching," she said. Within this year, a new ready-to-eat Korean food product, using Korean herbs as the main ingredient, will be rolled by Ichiriki under her name. "When I started learning cooking, I did not dream at all of winning a large fortune or social success. Food was all I had and knew. After that, all the other opportunities came along in a natural course," she said. Another natural phenomenon that she found out in her decades of culinary mastery, she stressed, was the fact that no two dishes taste the same, even if they were made after an identical recipe. "In all of my classes, I tell my students that the recipe accounts for only 85 percent of the outcome. The other 15 percent comes from the individual chef's own style, such as adjusting the level of heat or the minor bickering with the spices," she said. "Korean cuisine and Japanese cuisines may not be exactly the same, as they have developed in a separate path in a different climate. To add saltiness to food, Koreans commonly use salt as the basic ingredient, while Japanese starts from adding soy bean sauce. But at the very heart of cooking, both parties make food for their loved ones. This is what I have learned while teaching my students for a long time," Cho said with her trademark soothing smile. jwc@yna.co.kr (END)