South Korea (한국): Chicken Soup for the Soul: Korea

There are quite a few PW people I’ve ran into here at Samsung, all here for different jobs. So far most have been in the quality organization including Mike Lee, a PW employee who is actually lives in Asia. Mike used to be stationed at Samsung in Changwon for a few years but Pratt recently relocated him to Taiwan. This week while in town he has helped me get to know Changwon a little better by bringing me out to lunch with our Samsung team and his team. We ate Sam-Gye-Tang which translates into Ginseng Chicken Hot Soup. When I walked into the restaurant the first thing I noticed was that there were no chairs and the table was about 18” off the ground. Halfway through eating I asked if I could get a massage during lunch, my back and legs were killing me. Before the entrées were served there were a lot of side dishes around the table and a centerpiece of some kind of smoked fish. It turned out to be eel and was delicious; it kind of tasted like trout. In a few minutes our soups arrived and I had a large bowl in front of me with a small, whole chicken in it. The chicken was stuffed with white rice and the soup had some walnuts and dates in it. Mike told us that this was a Korean delight and very traditional. It was appetizing and tasted just like American chicken soup. The only difficult part about eating it was picking out the tiny bones. After our main meal they gave us all a special cold, sweet tea as a dessert. It was red in color and tasted a little bit like a cinnamon and raspberry. After eating I found out that eel is very expensive, about twice as much as the entire chicken soup entrée (\20,000 vs. \11,000 respectively). Right now the exchange rate in Korea is about \1090 for $1.00. We split two eel among eight of us so everyone could get a taste. One guy at the Samsung office later told me that eel is like Korean Viagra. It was a tasty meal that tasted like home and Korea at the same time.