The Korean Wave 2006 - Korean Cultural Service

The New York Times, wednesday, july 19, 2006
f5
Korea’s Taste
of Summer Is
a Long, Cool Slurp
by ELAINE LOUIE
JUNG-HYUN KIM was 3 years old when his mother
fed him a dish that changed his life.
It was a bowl of homemade buckwheat noodles – naeng
myun – that she made in their home in Pyongyang, now
North Korea. The noodles nested in cold, mild beef broth
topped with slices of tender beef brisket, sweet Asian
pear, lightly pickled white radish, cucumber and half a
hard-boiled egg. Eating it was as close to an epiphany as
a little boy can get.
“There’s a little bit of sweetness, and a little bit of sourness,”
said Mr. Kim, 73, through an interpreter, a daughter, Jenny
107
Buckwheat noodles are joined by brisket, pear,
pickled radish and an egg.
Cha. “It’s very refreshing and very cool. If you ask me why
I love it, I love it. Does there have to be a reason?”
In 1961, after settling in Seoul, South Korea, he opened
a restaurant named Dae Dong specializing in naeng
myun, the first of five of those restaurants he would open
in Korea, Paraguay and New York before retiring. “If I
want to eat it, I have to spend a lot of money,” he said
recently over a bowl at Dae Dong in Flushing. “But if I
do a naeng myun business, I can eat it whenever I want,
and as often as I want.” He ate it daily, three times a day,
until he retired in 1999.
He is not alone in his love for the cold noodles, one of
Korea’s most popular dishes, especially in the summer.
The noodles, sometimes called Pyongyang naeng myun,
are a light, one-dish meal with bursts of flavor – a crunch
of mildly vinegared radish, a spurt of crisp, juicy pear
and, of course, the savory noodles.