Culinary diplomacy

Ryu Kyung-ok is a small restaurant that fills up quickly during lunchtime. Its menu takes you on a gastronomical tour of North Korea.There's dumpling soup from Kaeseong, a rice and beef dish from Pyongyang and a cold bowl of noodles called naengmyeon from Hamhung.

Naengmyeon is what many of the customers come here for, including Rho Soo-ah. "When it's really hot, it's just really refreshing and it tastes good it kinda cools down your whole body," the 20-tear old says.

Ryu Kyung-ok's owner, Ahn Mi-ok, knows a lot about food from up north. She was once in the restaurant business back home in North Korea before she defected to the south in 2006. She says North Korean cuisine is a healthier option than what you might find below the 38th parallel.

"North Korean food is really simple compared to South Korean food," she says. "We use the traditional ways of cooking and don't add unnecessary ingredients. Here they use too much artificial flavoring or add extra types of sauces. North Korean food goes back to the basics."

Restaurants that feature dishes from North Korea, like Ryu Kyung-ok, are not new in South Korea. After the peninsula was divided after World War II, droves of refugees fled south, wanting to escape the Communist rise to power. But for some of the 21,000 defectors who have escaped during the past two decades, introducing the cuisine of their homeland is a way to make a living in the very competitive South Korean economy. All of Ryu Kyung-ok's employees are refugees. Ahn says since the restaurant opened in 2007, it has given many defectors, many of whom do not have the work experience that South Korean bosses are looking for, their first jobs in their new home.

"It takes three to five years to adjust to life in South Korea," Ahn says. "It's not easy at first to live here for North Koreans. Even the language they speak here is different than what we speak, mainly because of all the English words mixed in. Working here makes the transition easier for them."

A love of food across borders

While dishes like naengmyeon have been popular in South Korea for decades, Ahn hopes other North Korean dishes will soon catch on.

That's also the hope of Lee Aeran, 47, a former food inspector from Pyongyang. She now runs the North Korean Food Institute in Seoul. She says cooking is a great way for Koreans from both sides of the peninsula to overcome their differences.

"The problem is that North and South Korean people have had no communication since we were separated. But our love of food is universal. Cooking provides a place for both of us to come together and chat over cooking or eating and talk about food," Lee says.

But Lee isn't only reaching out to South Koreans via her cooking. Her school has started offering classes in English for those in Seoul's expat community. During one lesson, Lee led her students in the preparation of Haeju bibinbap, a vegetable and rice dish that unlike South Korean varieties uses chicken and soy sauce instead of beef and pepper paste.

One of her students during is Alex Jung, 27, of New York. He says despite growing up in a Korean-American family, he had never known about the variations in cuisine popular in North Korea.

"I think that I am pretty familiar with South Korean cooking in general and all the regional differences within South Korea," Jung says. "There definitely aren't that many opportunities to try, eat or make North Korean food. And I was just excited to learn about a certain style of North Korean food that I had never eaten before."

Starvation back home

Lee Aeran says her cooking school also has a special meaning for North Korean defectors who didn't have much to eat back home.

"Many people in North Korea really can't eat well, they struggle because of the food shortages there. They can’t have proper meals and often just have rice mixed with water," Lee says.

And often, there wasn't even enough rice, says 41-year old Seong Yuri. She's a student at the cooking school and says that since she came to the south in 2007, she's learned a lot about food from her homeland.

"We didn't have the ingredients to make these types of dishes back home, but now here in South Korea, I finally am able to learn how to make North Korean food. I really didn't know much about this type of cooking until I came here," she says.

But Seong adds that what she really learned when she came here was how differently North and South Koreans appreciate food.

"I was really surprised that many people here go on diets. In North Korea we are starving to death but here they want to be slim," Seong says. "I think there's actually too much food here and it's hard to choose what to eat, there is so much diversity. But I have gotten to try a lot of other countries' food."

Seong says that despite those differences, she too believes learning about each others' food can bring the two Koreas closer together. She says, "Reunification starts at the dinner table."

Author: Jason Strother

Editor: Grahame Lucas