Sungyung and 'Uri Bianca'

Going to bed at 5:00 and getting up at 8:00 is the most common cause of feeling (and looking) like an overly ripe persimmon.

I am in my office, tired, with stomach slightly upset by an unappetising lunch that consisted of greasy fish fillets, tartar sauce and an array of side dishes that are not on my fave list: shiny, oil-coated sea-weed strings, potatoes swimming in an ocean of sweet soy sauce, a weird odaeng/carrot/onion/squid salad. I am waiting for the first batch of the oral exam victims that are about to barge in at 3:00 pm. For no apparent reason, I am compelled to write about sungyung. What? Read on.


We have an instant coffee dispenser and quite a pretty stainless steel bowl of steaming 'sungyung' right next to it. Sungyung is a type of Korean rice tea made by pouring hot water over the rice stuck to the bottom of the pot in which it was cooking. Koreans love this transparent bluish liquid and believe it's very good for digestion. They even have a saying, something along the lines: 'nothing beats the taste of sungyung' or there's no other taste like sungyung.' I also heard that in the (g)olden times, this drink was consumed for its alleged ability to supply people with their daily allowance of iron, because the iron from the pot is absorbed by the rice and diluted in hot water. In the hillarious book I read last summer: "A brief history of tractors in Ukranian", a doctor in the impoverished Ukraine advises an aenemic patient to stick nails in an apple overnight, removes them in the morning and eat the apple to get the iron. My own grandmother used to make a soup called "klinchorba" - [klin = nail; chorba = soup] - the nail soup. It's a simple vegetable soup with a curious name. My grandmother claimed that during the war they would add a handful of nails to boil in the soup to get the iron out of them. I thought she was joking, but now I think she wasn't. It was just that my mind was too rigid to accept nails as an ingredient in a soup.

The 'old' D and I always politely declined the Korean iron drink, secretly calling it 'the rotten rice tea." Prof. K. laughed her head off when she heard the nickname. I felt comfortable enough with her to share this mischiveous misnomer. I wouldn't dare to share it with most Koreans. It's a well known fact that the sacred Korean food is not to be disliked or made fun of, even in the most good-natured of ways, and even if you happen to be the biggest fan of the said food.

Actually, the rotten rice tea doesn't have a lot of flavour, rotten or otherwise. It is simply hot water with vague hints of rice taste. Now, after an especially heavy meal, I like to have a few hot sips. What I don't like is listening to other people in the cafeteria, crowded around the pot, holding little plastic bowls, loudly slurping, gulping and - the worst! -vigorously swishing the hot liquid back and front and sidewise in their mouths, rinsing out gochu and other grime from between their teeth - and then swallowing. Urgh! It's one of the sights and sounds of Korea I tolerate the least - that, and people brushing their teeth, gargling and spitting in the sink while I'm making photocopies. Public grooming is an acceptable thing in Korea, and mostly I'm used to it, but some things still bother mem. Clipping nails in the subway is especially annoying, and potentially dangerous as those nails fly around like shrapnels.

After lunch, I headed to my office. In front of the elevator I met Profs L and S and a bunch of other profs I don't know. I exchange some small talk with L and S, and one of the other profs asked something about me in Korean, to which Prof. S., quite affectionately, actually, responded: "Anieyeo! Uri Bianca eeyeyo!" (No, she isn't. She's Our Bianca.) I don't know what he asked , most likely if I was a visitor or something like that, but I liked the response: Uri Bianca! Didn't even mind too much that they were talking about me as if I wasn't there.

Perhaps it's time to prove my Uri identity by starting that swishing sungyung ritual and walking along the hallways with a toothbrush sticking out of my mouth.