안녕! It’s Ari, your talkative Korean friend and weekend reminder 🎉 Today’s newsletter is about a seasonal food recipe and fun stories about the World Cup. Let’s start!
Suyuk With Spicy Radish Salad
Koreans are busy making kimchi these days. From November to mid December, family members or neighbors gather and make kimchi together. Making kimchi is extremely physically demanding and takes a long time, 1 to 3 days. So Koreans eat pork to boost energy during and/or after making kimchi. The pork food is called suyuk and it’s boiled pork slices. It’s super easy to make. Just boil thick pork with some veggies and sauce and then slice it. That’s it! It goes so well with fresh kimchi. My family always has suyuk whenever we make kimchi. It always feels like a reward of doing the hard work. Even if you don’t have fresh kimchi, you can enjoy it with salad. I found a recipe for both suyuk and spicy radish salad. Watch the video and try for yourself!
If you’re a vegetarian, try only the radish salad. It’s like kimchi made with chopped radish. If you like kimchi, you’ll love it too.
Why SK vs Uruguay Was Commentators' Nightmare
Qatar World Cup 2022 has started with Jungkook of BTS performing at opening ceremony. South Korea is among 32 countries qualified for the World Cup and it belongs to group H with Portugal, Ghana, and Uruguay. SK played its first game last night (KST) against Uruguay which ended in a goalless draw 😌 Before the game, a tweet about SK players went viral 👆 It shows the list of SK players having same last names including 5 Kims and 3 Hwangs with a caption saying “Commentators nightmare.” I happened to have an old TikTok video of me explaining why Koreans have same last names. One of the silly things I did on TikTok; Watch the video or read an explanation below to know why. It’s based on a historian’s interview about Koreans’ last names.
Koreans didn’t have last names until 7th century when a Chinese culture of having last names entered the country. But even after 7th century, having last names were only allowed for the privileged until 18th century when the country’s status system was abolished. After that, all Koreans could have last names but many of them wanted ones of Kings such as Kim, Lee, and Park, rather than making their own. This is why BTS has 3 Kims and SK soccer team has 5 Kims :D
SK vs Uruguay turned out to be a commentators’ nightmare but for girls, it was a heaven. After the game started, 우루과이 감독 meaning “Uruguay’s director” and 조규성 “Cho Gue-sung,” a name of a SK forward player trended online. If you see the pics of them, you’ll know why 👇 The best part of this was when an Argentine ARMY asked for Cho’s Instagram account on Twitter and a Korean girl gave it to her in exchange for the Uruguay’s director’s account. What an exchange! 🤣 After the game, Cho’s Instagram followers grew from about 30,000 to over 250,000.
📢 My new Korean lesson is coming next week! I wanted it to be fun so I set a theme of Korean Missions Force inspired by a secret agency, Impossible Missions Force in Mission Impossible. I give you a Korean mission in a short video on TikTok. You can watch a video to do a short Korean practice, you can make a duet to document your practice or just to let me know you accomplished your mission❤️, and buy a PDF to study sentences and expressions in the videos (coming soon). I’m super nervous about starting this. I hope you like it 🙏 Follow my TikTok to be the first to get a mission 👇
One last thing for today’s newsletter is a new bingsu from Seolbing, a popular bingsu chain in Korea. Bingsu is a snack made with ice shavings and various toppings like fruits, sweet tteok (rice cake), and pat (sweetened red bean paste). Seolbing released a strawberry bingsu topped with cheese and fresh cream cakes for this winter. If you visit Korea during the winter, try it or any other bingsu in any cafe! Many coffee shops in the country sell bingsu You’ll know the popular ice snack is not just for summer. It costs about 12 USD.
Thanks for reading! If you liked my newsletter, like, share, or leave a tip 👇 to support my work. It’ll help me a lot to keep creating 😘 See you next week, 안녕!