Chicken Soup for the Sinus

Travel Story by Naomi Arnold

South Korea

It's winter in Korea, and the rich, hazy green of summer is a distant, luscious memory. Hayley and I shiver in our classrooms, our students wrapped up in bright, loud fluffy hats and jackets, their raucous energy only briefly dampened by the cold. As nine of them leap over chairs and tables in the tiny room, I sit stiffly, my knees burning from the useless fan heater. I wish my students would keel over and drop to the floor, frozen solid like a row of brightly coloured Popsicles. I croak a half-hearted "choyangeeay!" But it's futile, and the noise and screams continue. They're meant to be taking a test. I huddle into my heater and think darkly of the hours I wasted frolicking in the sun a few months ago.

Winter in Korea is desolate and depressingly lengthy. The hills are brown, bare and rickety with stripped trees. The gardens lie in a tangle of rubbish, dead vines and concrete blocks. The wind screams down from the Asian landmass, dumping snow silently during the nights: come mid-morning, it's filthy yellow slush. With winter comes colds and flu, encouraged by the continuous contact with a hundred sniffling school kids a week. The only respite for a shivering expat English teacher is the bliss of ondol underfloor heating in a steamy restaurant. Hayley and I are both sick, and Korean-style chicken soup is an ideal remedy for both chronic coughs and the shouts of cooped-up children.

The restaurant across the road serves samgetang, an entire chicken simmered in a broth of rice, spring onion, garlic and dates. Less wholesomely for us, the restaurant also serves dog soup, or bosintang. Sometimes I see a truck piled with the shockingly red, skinny dog carcasses, limbs askew under their green canvas. So I'm happy to eat there. Let them eat dog. Every English teacher in Korea worth their kimchi knows about bosintang, one of the culinary stripes to earn along with live octopus soup, silkworm larvae and assorted roots, crustaceans, fish and mysterious pickled lumps. Dog soup becomes a folk tale, a badge of honour, a story to scare the new teachers.

"Is it true they eat dog here?" the uninitiated asks with wide eyes. The experienced teacher nods sagely. The newbie gasps. "Have you eaten dog?" The old teacher takes his time, takes his measure of the newbie, sips his beer, smacks his lips.

"I've eaten it once or twice. Tastes like chicken." The newbie is panting, horrifed. "How do you know you're not eating dog when you go to a restaurant? How would I know it's a dog restaurant?"

The oldtimer stares solemnly into the middle distance and sucks his Hite beer slowly.

"You'll know," he says. "It's like falling in love. As soon as you walk in, you'll just know."

So I am worldly, and prepared. But I never fathomed the intensity of the stench that greets us as soon as we escape our tiny school, where the secretary is trying to herd the kids onto the school minivan. We cross the chilly street and enter the thick fug of the restaurant that serves chicken and dog. And, opening the door, I know. The stench is overpowering. The air is filled with wet dogs, assaulting our swollen sinuses. Hayley and I sit on floor cushions in a daze. It is as if an entire pack of wild, stinky wet wolves are sleeping in front of a fire. The smell is everywhere, overpowering and sickening.

I pour water for Hayley, who is looking mildly shocked. "Is that what I think it is?" she asks. I nod. "Are you sure you want chicken soup?" I ask her. She grips her chopsticks and I try to breathe through my mouth. The women comes over and crouches next to us, and we order samgetang carefully and firmly.

Korean people are maniacal about many things. Health and "wellbing" is one of them. They eat dog for the stamina it's supposed to give them; it's a delicacy and a traditional foodstuff. How traditional it actually is, is up for discussion. Some believe it was brought in by the Chinese and is not traditionally Korean at all. This is a convenient shield for the anti-dogeating protestors. Bosintang and eating dog is actually illegal since the Seoul 1988 Olympics, when it was feared bad publicity would taint Korea's image. But eating dog is illegal kind of like how marijuna is illegal, and many people still eat it - for stamina.

August 17 is known as 'Malbok' in the Korean lunar calendar, the last of three annual 'dog days' when Koreans - mostly old men - eat lots of dog meat in the belief that it will boost virility. Koreans are obsessed with stamina and like to eat foods that purportedly increase it. Specific breeds of dogs for eating used to be beaten before they were killed, to soften the meat and heighten the adrenaline content. The dog's terror released chemicals into the meat, and eating it allegedly increased the eater's stamina.

Now, the dogs face the much happier fate of electrocution. But we have no need of stamina. Forty screaming kids a day is enough to toughen anyone up. I ignore the fireplace wet dog smell and concentrate on the soup. It's delivered in big, hot, black stone bowls, each with a whole chicken bubbling in its fragrant broth, four sweet and pungent cloves of garlic nestled inside. Eating the chicken with chopsticks is like trying to pick up a greasy ping pong ball with tweezers: absorbing and useless at the same time. I poke gingerly at the carcass, and each time the chicken rolls lazily, pitching and yawing in the amniotic of the stone bowl. Often in Korea, I find it takes a special kind of stamina just to get at the food. Seafood soup is a bowl of shells with meat hidden inside; slimy kimchi can be disagreeably difficult to pick up with slim metal chopsticks. No wonder Koreans need their dog meat.

Eventually I manage to dismember the bird with two spoons, and about an hour later Hayley and I are burping musically, picking our teeth with chicken bones and feeling content with the world. The good thing about Korean restaurants is that you sit on the floor to eat, and so you can just stretch out and relax afterward, letting your belly roam free among the cushions. The warm floor gently defrosts our buttocks as the wind drives hard snow against the windows. We'll save the dog for summer.

Illustration by Bob Veon
(Bob Veon's Website)

Read more about the author of this story:
Naomi Arnold

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