I write this journal entry not to elicit any ethical, moral or environmental debate over the business of whaling and/or the practice of eating whale meat. I am merely writing this piece to inform travellers that the culinary tradition of eating whale meat in Korea can still be found in various pockets of society throughout the country.
While it is true that the practice of eating whale meat has lost popularity in recent times ( mostly among the younger generations), it is also true that many middle-age and older Koreans still enjoy the custom. According to the Greenpeace environmental organization there are about fifty "registered" whale meat restuarants doing business in South Korea. The organization also claims that Koreans consume 150 tons of whale meat annually (although, I'm not sure of the accuracy of these reports). But it is accurate to report that many Korean people, including some in government, want to revise the business of whaling in Korea, albeit under "sustainable fishing" guidelines (The Korea Times Newspaper).
In the country's Southeastern region, in the large industrial city of Ulsan, the modern-day port of Jangsaengpo was once, historically and economically, an important whaling center. But today, since whaling was abolished in Korea in 1988, the site along the port's quay that used to be the key whaling station and processing plant, is now the Ulsan Whale Museum and Marine Research Center. With this in mind, I thought it reasonable to visit Jangsaengpo to learn something about the history and business of whaling in Ulsan, and I thought it reasonable also to sample some whale meat to better understand why there is a desire among many Korean people to keep the tradition of eating whale meat alive. So, one balmy saturday I set out to the old neighborhood to visit the whale museum and take in a lunch at one of the many whale meat restaurants that line the main street of the old harbour front, there.
The Ulsan Whale Museum is an architecturally ultra-modern designed structure standing three stories tall, with exhibition floors, education facilities, a library and a gift shop. It also has an outdoor deck that connects to a restored whaling vessel that visitors can walk about on in order to get a feel of what it is like to live and work aboard such a ship. There are two large buildings next to the museum where marine research is collected and conducted.
The exhibitions in the museum take guests from pre-historic times and early methods of whaling, to present times and whale conservation and ecological preservation practices. The exhibits open with a replica of "Petroglyph" rock carvings produced by pre-historic people who lived hunting, gathering and fishing in a valley region just west of today's Ulsan City over 3,000 years ago. The rock carvings show how those early Koreans hunted tigers, bears, deer and other smaller game, and how they fished for dolphins, sharks and various types of whlaes that inhabited the waters around the Korean peninsula. Korea boasts archeological findings that record people hunting and fishing around the peninsula as early as 5,000 BCE. The closing exhibit at the museum displays a 'mockup' of the inside of the whaling station that used to stand on that same spot, which depicts, with life-size mannequins, the various stages of "trying" (cutting, boiling and preserving) the whale's meat.
As for the business of dining on whale meat, travellers can find as many different tastes, textures and tinges of colour in whale meat as there are whales in the seas. Whale meat (goh.lae.goh.gi [in Korean]) is quite expensive in restaurants, so I opted to travel to Ulsan's Agricultural and Fisheries Wholesale Market where several vendors operate small lunch stalls that sell the meat at reasonable prices. There, I purchased a "set" of whale meat that consisted of a good-size portion of thinly sliced whale meat pieces, several cloves of raw garlic, slices of raw onion, a few hot peppers and a cold bottle of local beer for about twenty U.S. dollars.
The meat that I ate from the set that I purchased was the colour and texture of roasted beef. There was a tinge of reddish-brown flowing veinly through the meat, and it had not much of any strong aroma or oily smell that I expected it would have. The flavors of the meat were not strong, either. But some whale meat, I am told, is quite strong in flavor, oiliness and aroma. The type of meat I was eating I cannot say for sure as to what kind of whale it came from, as the woman operating the stall where I ate did not ( or did not want to) understand my question about the species of whale she was selling - But that is another story.
All in all, I must say that I quite enjoyed the meat that I was eating, but I also must say that I am not sure that the pleasing taste or the nutritional value of eating whale meat justifies the hunting of creature that are known to be "endangered" species. However, the decision to justify or not to justify the hunting and eating of whales I will leave to the readers of this journal entry and the International Whaling Commision.
