Page:Korea (1904).djvu/178

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126
KOREA

only the winter crop. The poor accept wheat as a substitute for rice, and brew a gruel from it. It is used as a paste; it figures in the native pharmacopœia, and in the sacrifices with which the summer solstice is celebrated.

Oats, millet, and sorghum are other important cereals in Korea. There are six varieties of millet; the price of the finer qualities is the same as that obtained for rice. One only of these six varieties was found originally in the country. Sorghum is grown principally in Kyöng-syang Province. It grows freely, however, in the south; but is less used than wheat, millet, or oats in Korea. A curious distinction exists between the sorghum imported from China and the native grain. In China, sorghum is used in making sugar; when this sugar-producing grain arrives in Korea it is found impossible to extract the sugar. Two of the three kinds of sorghum in Korea are native, the third coming from Central China. Oats become a staple food in the more mountainous regions, where rice is never seen; it is dressed like rice. From the stalk the Koreans make a famous paper, which is used in the Palaces of the Emperor. It is cultivated in Kang-won, Ham-kyöng, and Pyöng-an Provinces.

The Korean is omnivorous. Birds of the air, beasts of the field, and fish from the sea, nothing comes amiss to his palate. Dog-meat is in great request at certain seasons; pork and beef with the blood undrained from the carcase, fowls and game—birds cooked with the lights, giblets, head and claws intact, fish, sun-dried and highly malodorous, all are acceptable to him. Cooking is not always necessary; a species of small fish is preferred raw, dipped into some piquant sauce. Other dainties are dried sea-weed, shrimps, vermicelli, made by the women from buckwheat flour and