The Hanjeongsik

The hanjeongsik (한정식) is the Korean set meal, in which the whole of a dinner is laid before the guest in the form of a bapsang, a table of rice, soup and many side dishes. Its structure descends from the Joseon-period table, in which the court and the yangban households set out dishes in the cheop system of accompaniments, and the form was later carried into restaurants. The name itself, meaning Korean set meal, belongs to the restaurant tradition that took shape in the twentieth century, after the end of Japanese rule (1910–1945) and the war (1950–1953) had reshaped the country's dining rooms.

The foundation of the hanjeongsik is the ordinary bapsang. Rice is placed at the diner's left and soup at the right, nearest the hand, with the spoon and chopsticks set beside them; the shared jjigae or jeongol stands at the centre, and the banchan are arranged around it. The count of side dishes is expressed in cheop, and the rice, soup, kimchi and sauces are not counted among them. The everyday table holds three, five or seven cheop, and the court table is recorded at twelve. In the hanjeongsik the principle is expanded rather than abandoned: the guest is given the full range of cheop, and the kitchen is judged on the balance of what is placed before the diner. The dishes are chosen to cover the methods of the Korean kitchen without repeating one another. A table will commonly include a seasoned vegetable, namul, a fermented kimchi, a grilled or braised fish or meat, a steamed dish, a pancake, a jeon, and a dish dressed with doenjang or gochujang. The seasoning is built from soy sauce, doenjang, gochugaru, sesame oil, garlic and spring onion, and these are varied so that no two dishes arrive with the same flavour. Soup and rice anchor the meal, and Maangchi's Big Book of Korean Cooking treats these as the base on which the remaining dishes are built. The regional hanjeongsik reflects the larder of its place. On the southwest coast, in the Jeolla provinces, the table is known for its abundance and for the depth of its fermented seasoning, while in the east coast the sea supplies the greater part of the dishes. The principle that the table should answer to the land and the season is old, and the restaurant form preserves it by changing its banchan with the harvest. Service follows the manners of the household table. Elders are served first and begin to eat first, the spoon is used for rice and soup, and the chopsticks for the side dishes, and the shared dishes are taken from the nearest edge. In the full course, the sequence is often begun with a light porridge, juk, and finished with rice, soup and a plain sweet or fruit, with sikhye or tea to close. The hanjeongsik is therefore both a menu and a lesson in the order of the Korean table.

The hanjeongsik is built so that each dish contrasts with its neighbour: the salt of kimchi against the plain sweetness of rice, the heat of gochugaru against a mild steamed egg, the nutty sesame oil of the namul against a clear soup. The diner moves between the dishes with rice as the constant, and the meal depends on this balance of seasoning, texture and temperature.