22. TEA AND TOBACCO
O Jong-rok
In Korea, there is a special word for products, such as alcohol, cigarettes, and coffee, that have little or no nutritional value but are consumed prin- cipally for pleasure – gihopum. Unlike sweets or seasonings, the pleasure comes from the presence of a depressant such as alcohol or a stimulant such as nicotine or caffeine. In modern societies, these products remain popular despite concerns about the health and social problems they can cause when consumed to excess. South Koreans are known for their relatively high consumption of alcohol (see the previous chapter) and cigarettes. South Korea ranked twenty-first in the world in cigarette con- sumption with 1,733 cigarettes per adult per year in 2007, higher than the United States (#39) and the United Kingdom (#65) but lower than Japan (#12). Coffee consumption has been increasing steadily in the South since the 1970s. It ranks fifty-seventh in the world, behind the United Kingdom (#47), Japan (#41), and the United States (#27). Starbucks entered South Korea in 1999, and now there are hundreds of stores in cities throughout the country. In fact, at one point, the largest Starbucks coffeehouse in the world was located in Seoul. Koreans have drunk alcohol since ancient times, and tobacco was introduced in the Joseon period. But coffee was not introduced to Korea until the late nineteenth century; similar to other Asian countries, they drank tea. This chapter examines two of the main gihopum of the Joseon period, tea and tobacco, and the relation of tobacco to the social status system.
Tea
Geographically, the peninsula is located in a climate suitable for tea culti- vation, situated between China and Japan, two of the world’s major tea producers. Thus, there was potential for tea culture to spread among the commoner class as well. The Chinese character for tea can be pronounced either ‘cha’ or ‘da’ in Korean because its pronunciation differs in northern and southern China. The existence of two differing pronunciations shows that the tea cultures of both northern and southern China existed in Korea; it is also a sign that tea culture had once been widespread.
It is not known when tea was introduced to the Korean peninsula, but tea drinking was common among Buddhist priests during the Unified Silla period. Evidence can be found in passages from the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms: The monk Chungdamsa prepared tea on Jungsamil [the third day of the third lunar month] and Jungguil [the ninth day of the ninth lunar month] every year. He offered it to the Maitreya Buddha at Sahwaryeong on Mount Nam in Gyeongju. At the request of King Gyeongseok, he also served tea to the king. Since several Korean monks and scholars studied in China around the time of Silla’s unification of the Three Kingdoms, it is likely that tea culture was introduced to Silla from China in this period. Tea drinking became widespread among the aristocracy in the Goryeo period. According to the Goryeo dogyeong (An Illustrated Account of Goryeo), aristocrats drank tea imported from China because native tea was of inferior quality. Tea uten- sils were all imitations of Chinese ones, but it seems that tea culture had already secured a place in Korea’s culinary culture. Just as people drink water after drinking coffee today, people in the Goryeo era drank tea after each meal and then would also drink sungnyung (scorched rice tea). For the Goryeo aristocracy, tea was not an everyday drink but a gihopum with a distinctive place in its eating culture. Tea culture, however, declined in the Joseon era, as the yangban class did not drink it often; monks were the main drinkers of tea. Travelogues written by Westerners in the late nineteenth century noted that Koreans did not drink tea at all. One explanation is that other satisfying beverages could be found throughout the country; some point to the suppression of Buddhist culture during the Joseon period. However, these explanations are not very convincing since tea was enjoyed as a gihopum rather than an everyday drink and since Buddhism remains a powerful religion today. It seems that tea was no longer enjoyed as a gihopum in the Joseon period because of the potential for severe exploitation under the tribute tax sys- tem. When the government requested an unreasonable amount of tanger- ines as tribute, people would damage the base of tangerine trees and ruin the harvest in order to avoid paying the taxes. Similarly, it is probable that farmers dried the seeds of tea plants in an effort to avoid being exploited by having to cultivate tea to pay the tribute tax. By the late Joseon period, terms such as charye (ancestor memorial rites), dasik (a kind of rice cake), and dabang (tea room) – all of which use the Chinese character for ‘tea’ – were the only reminders of the past existence of a tea culture. The term damo originally referred to the government slave in every office whose job