Gim (김)

Gim is the laver of the genus Pyropia, formerly classed as Porphyra, gathered from rocks and later grown on nets along the southern and western coasts of the peninsula. It has long been a coastal product of Korea and appears on the ancestral rite tables and among the banchan of the household. The coasts of Wando, Jindo and Seocheon remain its principal producing places. The sheet is carried by every Korean table, from the lunch box to the festive spread, and by the diaspora, where it travels as a dried staple.

Gim is the sheet made from the red alga Pyropia yezoensis and related species, washed, chopped, spread thinly on frames and dried into a dark, near-black rectangle that turns green when held to the flame. The plain sheet, called maeng-gim or soegim in the trade, is the base. It is brushed with perilla oil (Perilla frutescens) or sesame oil, salted, and roasted over gentle heat to make gui-gim, the crisp table seaweed. Kept in strips it is cut for rice rolls, gimbap, or crumbled over noodles and rice. A separate preparation, gim-jaban, is the fried or seasoned flake sold in bags, while gimbugak is the sheet coated with glutinous rice paste, dried and deep-fried as a festive snack.

Gim is eaten with hot rice, often with a spoonful of ganjang or a dab of seasoned filling, and it accompanies the plain rice of the morning table and the lunch box. It is wrapped around rice and kimchi, folded round fried egg and radish in gimbap, and crumbled over noodles and porridge. It is drunk with barley tea, rice water or cold beer. The reasoning is structural: the sheet carries salt, the sea's savour and the sweetness of oil, and it meets the plain, soft starch of rice, which has none of these. The crispness against the yielding grain is the contrast the dish is built on.