[Hope Stories of Gyeonggi Farm Villages] – Kwon Jeong-yeon Introduces Seasonal Foods in Icheon City; Hopeful Gyeonggi Farm Village Story by the Gyeonggi Farming and Forestry Promotion Foundation

The Gyeonggi Provincial Government and the Gyeonggi Farming & Forestry Promotion Foundation have published Hopeful Gyeonggi Farm Village Story, a compilation of farm village stories presaging the society of our dreams. The book is not a compendium of written records but also a collection of first-hand accounts compiled via visits and direct interviews in the 31 cities and counties of Gyeonggi Province. The publication is expected to promote town-village communications and reveal new farm village values, paving the way to boost rural economies. The following is a story from Hopeful Gyeonggi Farm Village Story.

Hwang Dae-gwon’s book Wildflower Letter contains an interesting story.

‘Three days ago I weeded out some overgrown grasses to maintain some flowerbeds. At the time, as is often the case with me, I was thinking of making a green salad with some of the picked plants. But for some reason I decided to make mulgimchi (watery plain kimchi) with the grasses. A month earlier, I had made mulgimchi with sedums and found its taste fascinating. So this time I meant to try the cuisine with a diversity of plants. I would call it “grass platter mulgimchi.” Today I opened the jar of grass platter mulgimchi for lunch; as I had expected, the taste turned out to be just great. A bit bitter, but the bitter taste washed away the late afternoon heat. Young friends here were rather half-hearted about my food at first. Once having tasted it, however, they became crazy about it.”

“In fact, my grass platter mulgimchi defies comparison to conventional watery kimchi made with radish or Korean cabbage because it is superb in nutrition, freshness, and energy. How can it be compared to plain muligimchi when it is made of a dozen of wild plants that have been saturated in the energies of heaven and earth? Let me jot down as many of the plant ingredients as I can remember using in my mulgimchi: lettuce, dandelion, evening primrose, goosefoot, Korean lettuce, violet, hawk’s beard, thistle, sow thistle, plantain, milkweed vine, wild bean, ginseng vine, perilla, perennial Artemisia, daisy fleabane, and more. There are some other plants that I can’t remember at this moment. It is as if I had gathered all the wild plants from the flower bed. I wish you could taste my mulgimchi…”

Hwang Dae-gwon had been accused of complicity in a university-based North Korean spy-ring and sentenced to life: he had spent 13 years and 2 months in prison from 1985 to 1998 until he became 44 years old. During his long imprisonment, he had suffered from chronic bronchitis, backaches, and toothaches. One day he found wild plants in the corner of the jail yard and began to eat them. Shortly afterwards he regained his health. Fascinated with the healing power and beauty of wild plants, Hwang even made a flower bed in the jail yard and grow wild plants. His mulgimchi was made of nothing other than the wild plants he had gathered in this flower bed.

Combing Mountain Areas from 4 in the Morning

Reading the last sentence of the passage above, I thought to myself,

‘I wish I could taste mulgimchi someday.” And I forgot about it. Chance visited me unexpectedly. I was told that a place called “Seasonal Foods” in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province, serves various foods made of wild plants. I rushed to Icheon and was able to meet with Ms. Kwon Jeong-yeon (55) who makes and serves wild-plant foods.

Even the appearance of the building made me think seasonal foods would be unusual. A row of mill stones was guarding the entrance, and two square-shaped pillars made of piled roof tiles were standing on both sides. The entrance way was also studded with shards of broken pottery and roof tiles. The outer walls of the building were decorated with vertically arranged lumber, which gave me a sense of both fullness and emptiness at the same time.

Upon entering the building, a sour scent stimulates the nose. I am told that hundreds of wild plants ferment, exuding such an aroma. The inside walls are smeared with a mixture of red clay and rice straw. It is like the wind-proof walls that old farm village huts used to have. The ceiling is entirely pink because thick piles of dried wild flowers (nodansae) hang under the inner roof. Whenever the wind blows, the pink flowers make pink waves. Inside of the dining room, earthen pots of various sizes stand in ranks as if for military inspection. Glass bottles containing all kinds of wild-plant vinegars are on display along the wall.

All foods served by Seasonal Foods have wild plants in them. Salads, japchae, kimchi, boiled meats, and all other foods contain wild plants in one form or another. Some use wild plants as fresh from the mountains; others use wild-plant vinegar; and others have fermented plants. Not only plants but also wild flowers like day lilies, azaleas, and pansies are added to foods in luscious full bloom. Therefore, any food in Seasonal Foods has the fresh and bittersweet taste of wild plants. All of the wild plants are collected by Ms. Kwon, who transverses fields and mountains to gather them. She travels around the country throughout the four seasons. At four in the morning she gets up and leaves her home. At daybreak she starts to climb the mountain she has chosen where she picks wild plants bowing under the weight of mountain dew. She doesn???t feel lonely or tired thanks to her partner with whom she has worked for 16 years. Three to four hours work on the mountain allows her to fill up her van with wild plants. Then she retraces her steps home. After a one-hour nap she rolls up her sleeves and gets started cooking.

Winter is hardly a rest time. Sweep away snow or fallen leaves from a sunny spot, dig a little, and you will find wild winter plants. Ms. Kwon says, “Winter plants are much more delicious. In summer plants enjoy rich energy and other benefits of nature, so that the plants as food ingredients are rather feeble and weak. However, winter provides less nutrition and sunshine. The plants have to imbibe as much of nature’s energy as possible from fall in order to survive winter. They also ensure internal stability. That is why winter plants are sweet, delicious, and smooth.” Because Ms. Kwon has visited every corner of the country, just like her backyard, she knows exactly where to go to obtain a wild plant she needs. The owner’s knowledge enables Seasonal Foods to serve its dishes with wild plants in season. Ms. Kwon’s wild-plant dishes have charmed many celebrities at home and abroad including lawmakers, business leaders, foreign reporters, and the wives of foreign ambassadors. She was once invited to the House of Representatives and prepared food for 70 people. Also, she introduced her wild-plant dishes in front of 250 foreign reporters. The wives of foreign ambassadors admired her foods made of Korea’s indigenous wild plants. 

Ms. Kwon says, “I make food with a particular subject in my mind. It was the Roh Mu-hyun administration that asked me to prepare dishes for a reception for foreign correspondents. I instantly thought of plantain lily. Plantain lily is a white flower. Our ancestors saw themselves as the white-clad people. I also thought that the white flower might symbolize our president’s will to lead clean politics. So I visited Yangjae-dong and other flower markets to buy plantain lilies. I eventually prepared the meal mainly with wild plants including the plantain lilies. The invitees hailed it.” 

Although her hands are always wet and her feet are in hiking boots almost every day, Ms. Kwon actually grew up in a wealthy family. Her parents ran a machine parts shop and were rich enough to satisfy their daughter’s needs. Thirty years ago, however, Kwon got married to the first son of the head family. Her new family held memorial services 18 times a year for 100 visitors at a time. Whenever she came down to Okcheon, North Chungcheong Province, to perform an ancestral rite with her husband???s family, she had to stay there one or two months working from dawn to dusk in the kitchen. She says, “I didn’t hate it. Rather, I felt I was doing something worthwhile when visitors enjoyed my foods.” Ms. Kwon was also a fastidious mother. While her husband, who worked for a construction company, was staying abroad in Saudi Arabia, she moved down to a farm village in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, where she learned how to make baby food following traditional methods from the village grandmas. The concept of “organic food” was unknown at the time, but she grew pesticide-free tomatoes and made tomato juice on her own. Then she preserved the tomato juice in IV bottles that she obtained from Seoul Yeonshinae Hospital: she fed her son with the juice. The village grandmas also taught her to make baby gruel, which was basically a mixture of bean paste with wild plants like violet, shinga, shepherd’s purse, and mugwort. It was during that time that she discovered a fermented wildflower. One year, she was about to leave home for anther ancestral rite when her six-year-old son accidently poured sugar on dandelion petals that she had collected. Leaving them that way, she hurried to her husband’s countryside home. When she came back home two months later, she found the mixture of sugar and dandelion petals had become a thick liquid. She tasted it out of sheer curiosity and found it sweet and tasteful. From then on she kept using sugar-pickled dandelion when baking fishes or making salads. And she tried other wildflowers such as bulgeumjaengi, dandelion, shepherd’s purse, mugwort, mulberry and others to make sugar-fermented liquids. This was the origin of the wild-plant vinegars that fill the sidewall of today’s Seasonal Foods.

Even after her family moved from Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, to Dunchondong, Seoul, she didn’t stop making wild-plant vinegars. But one day a tragic incident happened. A boiled-corn vendor’s handcart tumbled over, and boiling water poured over Kwon’s son who was playing nearby. Her eight-year-old son’s entire body from the neck down was severly burned. It was so serious that his skin sloughed off when his clothes were removed. He was taken to the Hanyang University Hospital and stayed in bed with his whole body bandaged. The son cried, complaining about the itchiness of his tightened skin: however, his hands and feet were tied to the bed lest the burned parts be touched. Taking care of her tormented son, Ms. Kwon thought of the fermented wild-plant liquid at home. She thought the liquid might prevent the skin from being constricted. The next day she covered her son’s one thigh with a bandage saturated in wild-plant liquid and dried it with a hair-dryer. She kept work like this for six months, and granulation started. Nevertheless, the scars were not easily removed, and so that her son had to have several skin graft operations as he grew up. Interestingly, however, it turned out that the scar on the thigh to which the wild-plant liquid had been daily applied was not as serious as other parts: therefore, it did not require a skin graft. Kwon still believes it was thanks to the wild-plant liquid. The experience made her more engrossed with wild plants.  

“Your pottery may collapse our apartment building!” 

Ms. Kwon is also an earthenware fanatic. The sight of pottery makes her heart race. She says, “When I first visited my in-laws??? house after marriage, I saw 50 to 60 earthenware vessels in the barn. How pretty they were! I felt my heart pounding, thinking they would all become mine.” Every time she visited her in-laws’ house, she returned home with a piece of pottery. Her insatiable demand for more pottery compelled her to travel around the country to purchase the works that she liked. Some earthenware items were picked up in deserted houses. It didn’t take long to fill up her 48-pyeong apartment with earthenware. Not only the living room, but also the main room and even the bath room were crammed with pottery. Nevertheless, her desire for pottery was boundless. She even sold a furniture set she treasured to buy more pottery; the furniture was made in Italy, but she didn???t even blink when she sold it, being preoccupied with new pottery. Later on she sold a bed and piano.

“There were so many pots that neighbors living one floor down filed a complaint, claiming the weight of the pots would collapse the apartment building. We eventually had to leave,”kwon says. Prior to moving out, she expressed her wish to her husband to open a restaurant serving foods seasoned with fermented wild-plant liquors. Her husband didn’t like the idea at first, but soon yielded to his wife’s resolve.

Ms. Kwon had already found a spot for the restaurant in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province. It was a 5,000 square meter site with floor space of 500 square meters. Embarking on building decoration, she was full of hope. A long, large glass would cover the kitchen area while tempered glass surrounding the dining area would enable customers to see the outside landscape. The garden was already filled with cornelian cherry trees. The front yard was laid with grass. On moving day, seven 15-ton truck loads of earthenware were to be moved. All would be settled at the new house; just the thought of it made her heart flutter. However, the new house plunged her into despair. The problem was that she had signed the contract too hastily without checking the ownership of the land. It turned out that at least six to seven people were involved in land ownership. To put it simply, she was duped. 

She sold her apartment and her treasured earthenware as well. But that was not enough. Her husband’s future salaries were seized provisionally. Even before commencing the new business, she was already in debt. To forget her troubles, she climbed mountains day after day. She plucked grasses on the mountains and crammed them into pots. It was as if she were squashing her past into the jars. Neither her friends nor her family members sought to understand her. Finally, her husband left her. To make matters worse, she got into a car accident. She was badly injured in the femoral region, and was hospitalized for eight months in 2005. On the day she left the hospital, no one came to see her. She just spent her days in a torporous state. Then, one day, a deserted storehouse came into her sight: to her, however, the building appeared a promising site for a beautiful restaurant. She smelled her opportunity. Though just another ruined building to others, it was a foothold for a comeback for Ms. Kwon. Dragging her still unrecovered body, she got started on restoring the house. She smeared the walls with a mixture of yellow earth and sliced straws. The floor was also covered with yellow earth in which shards of broken pottery and roof tiles are embedded. At last, Seasonal Foods had its grand opening in December 2005.

“My efforts have paid off. I feel better now.” 

Some time ago, Ms. Kwon purchased a small townhouse in the vicinity of Seasonal Foods. Seemingly old and humble, her townhouse has a stunningly beautiful interior. A large, flat stone is laid on the floor and the walls are all covered with hemp cloth. The small attic room is for reading and listening to music. A watercourse is built in the middle of the porch where water actually flows. Fixed on the roof is an open window which draws fresh air throughout the year. Just like the restaurant, dried wild flowers hang on the ceiling and sidewalls. The bathroom is decorated in a metallic style which generates a sense of harmony in disharmony. Ms. Kwon is always grateful to nature because she believes the energy to surmount difficulties and the opportunity to restore her shattered life were gifts from nature. Wild plants greet her at the right place, and when she wants to”befriend” (Ms. Kwon phraseology meaning “plucking”) them, they quietly follow her. Before nature as such, she just can’t complain.

“These days restaurants are trying to appeal only with taste and flavor. But the priority should be given to human health. I have my own knowhow in handling wild plants. So far I have kept it to myself, but now I am teaching it to others. I just give it away, although it took ten years for me to master. Some people seem to think that I’m sharing it too easily. They should know that I did not learn it on my own, but was taught by nature. I’m just returning it.”

Ms. Kwon has an ambitious plan to make a manual of wild plants with which anyone can extract and combine the ingredients of wild plants. The manual will also enable us to make wild-plant foods standardized in colors, flavors, and tastes. To do so, one should know the movements of microorganisms that promote fermentation. This work is what bothers Ms. Kwon nowadays. “Fermented foods are drawing global attention today. If we can work out a chart showing the functions of microorganisms involved in fermentation, it would a national asset. I am preoccupied with the work these days,” she says.

©G NewsPlus News | Farming and Forestry Promotion Foundation jisseon@ggaf.or.kr