The meal writer’s cramp

The meal writer’s cramp

388

In 1979, I joined the Peace Corps right after college and found myself living and working in a small South Korean farming town, two hours northeast of Seoul in the mountains. After training, in basic Korean and public health protocols I was dispatched to the town of Gapyeong, Gayeong was back then a provincial backwater farming town. There were no resident foreigners other than me and the old Irish Catholic priest. Now it is an exurban suburb of Seoul and the nearby city of Chuncheon with lots of commuters. It is on the Seoul Chuncheon subway line, about an hour to downtown Seoul and 20 minutes to Chuncheon, the provincial capital of mountainous Gangwha province which reminds me so much of West Virginia.

Every day was a lesson in cultural differences. I was slowly getting used to living in a culture that was very different from the United States.

One day I was invited to go to dinner at the house of the town chief. It turned out we had the same birthday, but he was twenty years older than me. The whole health center was invited to dinner as the town chief was a good friend of the health center doctor and many of the staff.

They treated me as VIP which I supposed I was. The chief’s wife made a special birthday spread for everyone. They served meat, rice, kimchi, and a copious amount of the local firewater, “Soju” which is a vodka made out of rice and sweet potatoes. Packs quite a punch.

The Korean gentlemen sitting next to me said to me the only English words I would hear that night,

“Dog meat”

Indicating the meat in front of me.

I had a decision to make. Do I refuse to eat dog meat? Causing offense, no doubt? Or do I sample it? I chose the diplomatic solution and tried it and assured everyone that it was great and drank more soju to wash it down.

That was one of the weirdest meals in my life. I tried dog meat a few more times since then but dog meat is no longer eaten very much in Korea. As Koreans now have dogs as pets and it is considered barbaric and old-fashioned to eat dog meat. They still eat dog meat in the north they say.


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Prompt: You find yourself in a unique situation while having a meal.