South Korean Cultural Artifact #1: Tteokguk (떡국)
Since Korean New Year is coming up (February 1, 2022), I thought it would be interesting to talk about a traditional Korean New Year dish, called tteokguk (떡국). Korean New Year, called Seollal (설날) in Korean, is the first day of the Korean calendar which originated from the Chinese lunisolar calendar. South Koreans celebrate this important national holiday by visiting family, wearing hanbok (한복 - traditional Korean clothes), performing ancestral rites, playing folk games, and eating traditional foods. One traditional Korean dish that is always served on Seollal is tteokguk, or rice cake soup. ‘Tteok’ (떡) means rice cake and ‘guk’ (국) means soup/broth in Korean. As the name suggests, tteokguk consists of a beef or anchovy stock with thinly sliced rice cakes, beef, and garnished with thin julienned cooked eggs, marinated meat, and dried seaweed laver (gim). Often times, Korean dumplings, or mandu (만두), is added to the tteokguk. This variety is literally called tteokmanduguk (떡만두국).
The custom of eating tteokguk on New Year's Day originated from ancient times when families would perform ancestral rites by serving tteokguk to their ancestors. It is a tradition to eat tteokguk on New Year’s day because it is believed to grant people good luck for the upcoming year. The white broth symbolizes a clean and pure start to the year and the coin-shaped rice cakes symbolize prosperity. Eating tteokguk on Korean New Year also serves an important role in the Korean age reckoning system in which you gain a year of age on Seollal. According to Korean tradition, you don’t officially gain a year of age on Seollal until you have a bowl of tteokguk. On Seollal, a person may ask you, “Did you have a bowl of rice cake soup today?”. This question would be the same thing as asking, “Are you one year older?”.
As a Korean-American, my mom makes this dish for my family every Western New Year's Day (January 1). Usually, we make our own mandu at home ahead of time to add in our tteokguk to make tteokmanduguk. Although tteokguk is traditionally a seasonal/winter dish, it is a popular dish that is now eaten at all times of the year. When I studied abroad in South Korea last fall, it was not uncommon to walk into a Korean restaurant and see tteokguk on the menu. Koreans love this dish because it is delicious, nutritious, and easy to make.
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