Clipart Korea
Lifting your rice bowl is bad manners. What Koreans take for granted at the table struck readers in Southeast Asia as a genuine culture shock.
A video by Korean American chef Chris Cho, who explained on social media how dining etiquette differs among Korea, Vietnam, China and Japan, went viral in Vietnam, the Vietnamese outlet VnExpress reported on the 16th.
In Vietnam, China and Japan, eating while holding a rice bowl in one hand comes naturally, the video said. In Korea, by contrast, children learn from an early age that lifting the rice bowl is impolite.
Japan is the opposite. Diners there commonly raise a rice bowl or a small soup bowl close to the chest to eat, and leaning down toward a bowl left on the table is often seen as unrefined. Though the two countries share a chopstick culture, their approach to bowls is the reverse of each other.
In traditional Korean dining etiquette, the rule is to leave the rice bowl and soup bowl on the table. Sticking chopsticks upright into rice or picking up utensils before an elder does are also considered things to avoid. The more formal the setting, the more strictly these rules apply. Still, there is a tendency to relax them for everyday foods such as noodles or fast food.
VnExpress attributed the difference to Korea’s distinctive utensil set, the sujeo — a long-handled spoon used together with chopsticks. Because the spoon carries rice and soup to the mouth, there was no particular need to hold the bowl in hand.
“The habit of eating rice with a spoon helped shape the perception that lifting a bowl is impolite,” said chef Jung Seo-young, a co-founder of the food research project Root Kitchen.
The composition of the meal also played a part. Joo Young-ha, a professor at the Academy of Korean Studies, explained that because the Korean peninsula was ill-suited to growing wheat, a dining culture built on grain rice, soup and side dishes carried on. In northern China, noodles and bread took hold as staples from around the 7th century, making chopstick use dominant, while on the Korean peninsula the practice of using a spoon and chopsticks together persisted for centuries. On a Korean table, the rice bowl is usually placed on the left and the soup bowl on the right, with side dishes set in the middle, and diners alternate between spoon and chopsticks.
Metal bowls are another factor that cannot be left out. In the past, the royal court and upper classes of the Korean peninsula used bowls made of an alloy of 78% copper and 22% tin. They were highly durable and could be sterilized in boiling water, but their high thermal conductivity made them hard to pick up by hand when filled with hot food. As metal production increased during the Joseon Dynasty and brassware spread to ordinary households, analysts say, it helped entrench the habit of not lifting the rice bowl.
None of this is an absolute rule, of course. Koreans, too, sometimes pick up small bowls of food to eat, and in Vietnam, China and Japan the way bowls are handled varies with the type of food and the occasion. VnExpress noted that this comparison shows how differences in food culture reflect not mere habit but the history and environment of each country.