Spring vegetables, abundant in vitamins and minerals, can help to overcome spring fatigue and restore vitality. Rich in fiber and filling as well, they are also popular as diet food.
1 Various types of bom namul, or spring vegetables, at a street market. 2 Spring namul salad: wild scallion (dallae ), water parsley (minari ), and Pimpinella brachycarpa (chamnamul ) tossed with citron syrup dressing.
Natural disasters, great and small, also caused food shortages. Therefore, King Sejong had books published, such as Guhwang Byeokgokbang (Ways of Fighting Famine), which not only contained measures to overcome famine due to drought and flooding but also advice on how to find and prepare survival foods during times of famine. The books described several hundreds of food substitutes for famine relief, such as pine tree bark, elm bark, pine needles, buckwheat flowers, bean pods, taro, yam, acorn, Atractylodes (sapju) root, and Rumex coreanus (sorujaengi). In times of serious famine, such “foods,” which included wild herbs, were essential sources of nutrition. People added any available grain to these plants to make a filling one-pot meal or a kind of gruel. The dire conditions were recorded in Mongmin Simseo (Admonitions on Governing the People) by Jeong Yak-yong, a prominent scholar of silhak (practical school of Confucianism) of the late Joseon period: “During a famine, people have to eat wild vegetables gathered from mountains and fields but they cannot easily swallow this food unless it is seasoned with salt. The salt price then rises, so it will be of help to make soy sauce early in sufficient quantities and prepare kelp and dry shrimp.” The Canadian missionary James Scarth Gale, who arrived in Korea in the late 19th century, noted: “There is no other folk who know the kinds of edible wild plants better than the Koreans.” He marveled at how Koreans would eat bracken tops after removing toxic content by soaking them in water. Bracken is a kind of fern classified as poisonous in Western countries. Eating namul today still rekindles memories of the spring season for people who grew up in the countryside. Yi Hae-in, a Catholic nun and poet from Yanggu in Gangwon Province, recalls the spring days of her childhood: “I want to call out the names of friends / who together with me gathered the wild namul. / I want to see my good childhood friends / who at times expressed envy through their eyes, / like the chill breeze envying the season of flowers.”
A Health Food Rediscovered Namul is back in the spotlight again, no longer as a famine food but as a health food. Spring vegetables, such as shepherd’s purse (naengi ), mugwort (ssuk ), Ixeris dentata (sseumbagwi ), spring cabbage (bomdong ), Aster scaber (chwinamul ), bell flower root (doraji), fatsia (dureup ) shoots, day lily (wonchuri ), bonnet bellflower root (deodeok), wild parsley (dol minari), wild scallion (dallae), and chives (buchu), are abundant in vitamins and minerals, so they can help to overcome spring fatigue and restore vitality. Rich in fiber and filling as well, they are also popular as diet food. For the steadily growing ranks of vegetarians, namul dishes are an ideal choice. Although not as flavorful as the seasonal greens freshly gathered from the mountains and fields, various greenhouse edibles can also be enjoyed year round nowadays. When the cold winter winds subside and new sprouts emerge, why don’t you take a trip to the countryside to welcome the arrival of spring? At popular restaurants that specialize in wild namul dishes and traditional restaurants scattered across the country, the sheer delight of tasting fresh greens filled with the fragrance of springtime will immerse you in comforting memories of life’s continuous renewal. 1
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Ko re a n Cu l tu re & A rts