By Scott Shepherd

There is an unfortunate misconception among many Koreans I have spoken to: that, apart from fish and chips, British cuisine does not exist. This illusion persists even among the wisest and most blameless members of society, namely my wife.

This belief comes with an unspoken comparison between Korea’s impressive culinary achievements and Britain’s perceived lack thereof: look at all the jjangs and tangs, the jeons and myeons and baps and guks. What on your rainy island can compare to our centuries-old and succulent smorgasbord? But while I certainly love Korean food, I fundamentally reject the premise that British food is as bad as everyone thinks. There are several assumptions about Korean food that dominate the conversation, so to explore why the myth persists so persistently, I want to discuss a few selected dishes and what they suggest about K-food.

First up: noodles. The BBC reported last month that the Danish Food Safety Authority had issued a recall of Korean Buldak instant noodles because the food was so spicy it “posed a risk of acute poisoning to consumers.” To the delight of spice lovers everywhere, Danish authorities reversed their recall this week.

The BBC article and others that followed had a mild undertone of levity, but while most of the reporting focused on the details of the case – the Danish agency’s statement, the company’s response, the question of whether the Danes simply can’t handle the pressure – what caught my attention was the use of the word to describe the food in question: ramen.

Perhaps I’ve lived in Korea for so long that a latent sense of nationalism has rubbed off on me, because I can’t help but think that it’s inaccurate to use the term ramen to describe Korean noodles. Ramen is a Japanese word that refers to Japanese food, while the Korean word ramyeon (also spelled ramyun) refers to a different dish with a different origin. For readers who want a detailed exploration of the differences, The Korea Herald ran a short but thoughtful piece on the matter a few years ago. While the food and even the word ramyeon both come from Japanese, the two words (and foods) remain distinct.

Confusingly, several Korean food manufacturers label their products as “ramen” – including Samyang, makers of the Buldak noodles that have proven so dangerous to delicate Danish tongues. Given the historical animosity between Korea and Japan, it’s hard to understand why Korean companies would be willing to label their products with a word that implies they’re something else, and a Japanese thing at that.

I think the word should be consistently spelled “ramyeon” or “ramyun” in English; the former is better because it meets the Korean government’s Romanization standards. This spelling would distinguish the Korean noodle from its Japanese counterpart and would further enhance the culinary reputation of a country whose cultural status has advanced so much in the past decade. Korea now has the international clout it previously lacked to assert its own gastronomic distinctiveness.

Of all the problems in the world, how we spell the name of a noodle is certainly not the worst. But spelling does matter, because words say so much about origins. This is especially clear when we think of the fuss a few years ago over the apparent attempts by Chinese officials to imply that kimchi is Chinese. After all, the conflict arose over the conflation of the Korean word “kimchi” and the Chinese word “pao cai”, implying that the two are the same (and both Chinese). After the predictable outcry in Korea, some sections of the Chinese media came back and suggested that the whole problem was simply due to bad translations.

In any case, the defense of kimchi’s Korean identity has always been far more passionate than the rather lax approach to the ramen/ramyeon issue. This is easily explained by the fact that the spelling debate is a matter of English semantics, hardly the most fascinating subject for Korean internet users. Kimchi is also much older, dating back centuries, if not millennia; the few decades of noodles pale in comparison. And of course, kimchi is the representative food of Korea: to meddle with it is to face the wrath of a nation.

But an interesting counterbalance to kimchi is jjajangmyeon. It was developed in Korea, is sold in Korea and in Korean restaurants abroad, and is eaten almost exclusively by Koreans. Yet here the food is not categorized as hansik (i.e. Korean food) but as chungsik (Chinese food).

The direct explanation for this can be found in the origins of jjajangmyeon as a dish based on Chinese food and developed by Chinese immigrants – although it is worth noting that the food was created in a restaurant in Incheon. But can we really describe something that is almost exclusively eaten by Koreans in Korea as “Chinese”, especially if it is not widely eaten in China or by Chinese people?

And what about the products that come from jjajangmyeon? Aren’t foods like chapaghetti Korean? Or Jjajangbap? They were developed in Korea by Koreans for the Korean market, but they are derived from a dish labeled Chinese. Where do they fit in?

And yet I think Koreans actually accept jjajangmyeon as Korean, in fact if not in name. It is sold in Korean restaurants all over the world, and I imagine that if a representative from a neighboring country made noises suggesting that jjajangmyeon was actually Chinese, Koreans would reject it loudly and clearly.

To me, it only makes sense to see jjajangmyeon (and its modern descendants) as Korean. Perhaps this is because I approach the whole issue as someone who grew up and studied in London, where nationality, citizenship and belonging are much looser concepts. Identity in the UK is less dependent on the past – origins, history, race – and more on the present – ​​location, citizenship, sentiment. In Korea, it’s all interconnected, as I’ve written before: you can only be accepted as Korean if you meet all the right criteria.

These attitudes extend not only to identity, but also to food. While Britain has a delicious range of “traditional” foods – biscuits, breakfasts, cheese, chips, muffins, pasties, pies, roasts, salads, sandwiches, sausages, scones, soups – it has also embraced many other dishes. Coronation chicken and chicken tikka masala are as British as baked potatoes, and so are the modern dishes being developed in trendy, expensive eateries in Shoreditch and Soho.

Our food reflects so much about us. Underlying the claim that Britain has no cuisine is the implication that a country’s food cannot have had any outside influences to be truly from that country. It’s the same reason why everyone calls jjajangmyeon Chinese, despite all evidence to the contrary.

So there we have it: jjajangmyeon is Korean, kimchi is not Chinese, and British food does exist. And best of all, our Danish friends have access to ramyeon again.

Dr. Scott Shepherd ([email protected]) is a British-American academic. He has taught at universities in the United Kingdom and Korea and is currently an assistant professor of English at Chongshin University in Seoul. The views expressed in the article are those of the author and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.