Meat Eating Practice in Korea

한국의 육식문화

Koryo Dynasty has greatly effected the meat eating practice in Korea. And by focusing on this period, this paper has in vestigated how this practice influenced and effected our meat eating culture. The 'Orders to Prohibit Butchery' written on Koryo's history books were to encourage stockbreeding rather than to follow the Buddhist policy they followed. By encouraging stockbreeding, they wanted to promote the usage of cattle in farming and thus increasing agriculture industry as a whole. Nonetheless, records show that hunting was permitted to a certain degree. And this allowed the civilians to depend their meat supply from hunting and for the fire field farmers to capture wild animals that harmed their crops. Moreover, through 'Kiwujae' (Kiwujae - a shamans service to pray for rain / ritual (praying) for rain.), we could see that earlier part of Karyo's rituals and ceremonies followed the Buddhist tradition while the latter followed the Shamanism tradition. Perhaps this was the result of allowing 'meat' for the service offerings. As Shamanism could be considered as a religion that allowed 'meat', prevalence of Shamanism was promoting meat-eating at mess(after these rituals and ceremonies that offered food (meat inclusive) to their guardian or god, the civilians would dine together.). In relation, this public eating practice slowed down the progress for storage technique. Therefore, meat-eating was developed through public and mass dining rather than through the form of family or private. On this account, we can safely regard meat-eating practice as a 'public event'. On the other hand, the history of castration is not so long in Korea. And the purpose of such practice was to use the stock for farming rather than to yield high quality meat. It is known that Mongol in Koryo period has greatly influenced meat cooking in Korea. And the exemplary dish is the 'tang' (tang - kind of soup. However less creamy, clearer broth and with more ingredients than soup.). However, the tang we ate in everyday life had the same cooking method as the tang we offered for services. Moreover, since we did not use castrated animals for our offering as the Mongolians, we must not have been greatly influenced by them. But if so, perhaps the influences would have been limited to the nobility.