LA Times- Come cook with a North Korean

[soryang]

Come cook with a North Korean. It’ll be a side of the country you’ve never seen
LA Times By VICTORIA KIM STAFF WRITER
JAN. 30, 2020 3 AM

...Where she’s from, there’s no Instagram, no internet, barely any smartphones. To fuss about plating would have been an unfathomable luxury, as would the idea of cooking for fun.

...

There are ties that seven decades of separation can’t sever — and food is one. Like the language and people, North Korean food is largely familiar to South Koreans, despite the heavily militarized border separating the two. In both places, rice and kimchi are staples; garlic, fermented sauces and red pepper flakes are foundational flavors.

But the tough beige strips of tofu skin that Kim features in one of her cooking classes — with the texture of beef jerky and the appearance of a fire hose — is widely consumed in North Korea and unfamiliar to most in the south.

The strips are injo gogi — literally, “artificial meat” — a food born of hunger. It’s made from the residue of soybeans after they’ve been pressed for oil, typically used as animal feed elsewhere in the world. It took hold in the 1990s in North Korea, a meat substitute and much-needed source of protein during a catastrophic famine in which hundreds of thousands died of starvation.

https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2020-01-30/north-korea-food-cooking-class

There is a video at the LAT link where she instructs on how to prepare injo gogi 인조고기 (artificial meat). Unfortunately it's only in Korean.

This youtube introducing Jesse Kim's food channel has English subs. She visits LA and demonstrates some English speaking skills. At this point she appears not yet ready to take on South Korea's English speaking food guru Maangchi who has a very successful Korean cooking youtube channel.

Maangchi:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8gFadPgK2r1ndqLI04Xvvw

[PJMcK]

1. Good to know

With full respect, I would have thought North Korean cuisine to be severely limited.

[soryang]

2. The food supply is very limited

The food culture, or food processing, in Korean culture, generally, is very advanced. In North Korea, the food supply seems always at risk, to nature, sanctions, the North Korean communist system etc. I thought this article about this young North Korean defector to South Korea was making that point particularly in regard to the famine in the nineties, but also generally. Why does a new protein substitute need to be made? The artificial meat made with left over soy husks or whatever they are, was a response to severe food shortages. But Jesse said even this substitute for meat protein could only be afforded by the "well off" in North Korea.

I understand that now injo gogi is made in Incheon, SK. It's possible that this food may become a popular food as a side dish in South Korea. The one well known North Korean dish in South Korea is naeng myun, a buckwheat cold noodle dish. This dish was served to South Korean Chaebol (industrial elite) guests on an exhange visit to North Korea in 2018. Ri Son Gwon made some sarcastic remark about that, being quoted recently in the press again, because he's the new DPRK Foreign Minister.

It looks like Jesse's efforts may be promoted by LINK, Liberty in North Korea, an NGO. I didn't realize what that was when i posted her video.


(Source- Channel A News Top Ten 5.22) Ri Son Gwon (seated far left) to top South Korean business leaders visiting North Korea in September 2018, on a trip with President Moon Jae In: Did the nengmyun (North Korean cold noodle dish) go down your throat?