KoreanClass101.com Blog

Hi. 현우 here. : )

I went to 광주 , the city I was born in, to celebrate 추석  with my parents. 추석 is always good, even though you can expect some seriously heavy traffic in the main highways because a lot of people move from city to city all at once. Nevertheless, it’s always worth the effort. For 추석 we did the usual things, like having good food, visiting a lot of relatives and saying hi here and there, bowing, maybe getting some allowance (which doesn’t happen to me any more, unfortunately) and having a small ceremony to thanks the ancestors and everybody else, and visiting some tombs of our close ancestors and paying respect.

But this year,  we did something else too - my family went for a drive!! This is very rare for my family because we only drive to the places we have to go to but never go for a drive all together, but maybe because we had a very good time in Jejudo about 3 weeks ago, driving around the island, we decided to do it once again near Gwangju.

So we went to a small town near 광주, and visited a small temple area where a lot of people were already there to enjoy the view there.

(click to see the bigger image)

And there I saw these 장독s : )  so I wanted to share the photo with you all. They are traditional containers for all type of “장” (간장 - soy sauce / 고추장 - pepper sauce / 된장 - soybean paste) and of course, Kimchi.

(click to see the bigger image)

My parents have two jars like these in their house in the terrace - for 김치 and 된장, but I don’t have one in the house I’m living in in Seoul, simple because I don’t make Kimchi and don’t have to ferment 김치 for long in these jars - I just use the refrigerator ^^

Traditionally, these 장독s used to be buried underground during the winter so that they don’t freeze, and the temperature is just about right underground, so the Kimchi ferments at the perfect speed - and the Kimchi refrigerators are supposed to do the same.

They are still not so difficult to see even in Seoul, but I think fewer and fewer houses have these 장독, not to mention 장독대, a place like this designated only for 장독s. : )