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| Wives of Jongka, a Korean word referring to families with a long history and heritage, showcase their families' traditional foods during a press conference at the Plaza Hotel in Seoul, Friday. / Courtesy of Rural Development Administration |
By Nam Hyun-woo
The Rural Development Administration (RDA) is inviting foreigners interested in Korean food to delve deeper into the country's traditional culinary culture, promoting "Jongka food," homemade meals passed down through the generations.
The government agency for developing the rural food industry said that Jongka is a hidden food cultural resource of Korea because of its uniqueness and the stories embedded in the meals.
"Though many renowned families in the world look to their heritage as a cultural resource, there are not many cases of industrializing or commercializing a family's meals," the RDA's National Institute of Agricultural Sciences Director General Han Gwi-jeong said during a press conference in Seoul. "Jongka food is a unique culture containing the history of a family."
Jongka means a family of long and prominent linage. It is a traditional Korean family system dating over 400 years since the mid-Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) era.
The UNESCO World Heritage sites of Hahoe Village in Andong and Yangdong Village in Gyeongju, both in North Gyeongsang Province, are areas where houses of famous Jongkas are located.
Jongka food is passed down to the wife of the eldest male descendant of the head of the generation. Since each house has distinctive characteristics and traditions in their food in terms of cooking and serving, it is recognized as a precious cultural asset, but has not been under the spotlight so far, while the wives are aging without successors as their families are also urbanizing.
As part of its efforts to promote Jongka food, the RDA said that since 2010 it has been putting together a database of the recipes and stories of the foods. It has so far discovered 2,457 recipes from 143 families, and 257 recipes from 89 families have been registered on the database, which is available at http://koreanfood.rda.go.kr.
Along with this effort, the RDA has teamed up with Hanwha Hotels & Resorts to serve dishes from 12 renowned Jongkas at the buffet of the Plaza Hotel in central Seoul.
"For 90 days from September to November of last year, we filled one of our serving stations with Jongka foods to experiment whether they can compete with global cuisine," chef Kim Young-chang said. "It turned out that the foods are appealing not only to Koreans but also foreign guests, with buffet sales during the period growing 10 percent to 15 percent from before," he said, adding the hotel has been serving Jongka dishes since then.
"For the past couple of years, the hotel studied Jongka foods with the RDA and we found that except for popular bulgogi or japchae they are still not known in the world," Hanwha Hotels & Resorts CEO Kim Young-cheol said. "We will continue making efforts to systemize and promote Jongka foods across the world."
"Jongka food showed its value by being recreated on restaurant menus," an RDA official said. "The RDA will strengthen the cultural content of Jongka food for more quantity and better quality, exploring ways to improve their heritage and sustainable applications."
