동치미

Dongchimi is a radish kimchi, usually made in winter. Urimalsaem, the open dictionary of the National Institute of Korean Language, records the pronunciation as [dongchimi] with a long first vowel, and defines it as "one of the radish kimchis, usually made in winter: whole salted radishes are covered with boiled and cooled brine and steeped lightly". Put in one line, dongchimi means a winter kimchi of whole radishes steeped in brine, eaten together with its broth. Unlike the kimchis dressed with red pepper and salted seafood, dongchimi is a kimchi whose broth is the main thing, which is why, rarely among kimchis, one can say it is drunk. The origin of dongchimi is dongchim (冬沈), dong (冬), "winter," and chim (沈), "to steep." Urimalsaem's historical note records that dongchim-i, the older form, appears in texts from the nineteenth century, that it is the Hangeul spelling dongchim of the Sino-Korean word 冬沈 with the suffix -i attached, and that dongchimi, the spelling that carries the final consonant over to the next syllable, appears from the twentieth century onward. The 1880 Dictionnaire Coréen-Français and the 1895 Gukhan hoeeo, which the dictionary cites, write the two characters 冬沈 beside dongchim-i, and the word dongchim itself survives in the dictionary today as a dialect word for dongchimi in Jeonnam and Chungnam. Take the two characters one at a time. 冬 comes from the shape of a cord knotted at both ends and first meant "end"; later 冫, ice, was added and it took charge of winter, the end of the year. 沈 sets 冘 beside 氵, water; its first sense is to sink something into water, and from leaving it sunk came the sense of steeping. 冬沈, then, is character for character what is sunk in winter, what is steeped in winter. This 沈 is the same character found in chimchae (沈菜), the old word for kimchi, and in chimjang (沈藏), the root of gimjang, so the three words are siblings sharing the one character for sinking in brine. The one that carries the season, winter, in its name is dongchimi. The -i attached to dongchim is a native Korean suffix that makes the name of a thing. A Korean tail on two Chinese characters produced dongchim-i, and when spoken aloud the final m slides into the next syllable to give [dongchimi]. The spelling that wrote this sound as heard became the standard form, so inside the word dongchimi sit both the Sino-Korean dongchim and the shape of the Korean mouth that spoke it. Q: What does dongchimi mean? A: A radish kimchi, usually made in winter (Urimalsaem). Whole salted radishes are covered lightly with boiled and cooled brine, and the kimchi is eaten radish and broth together. Now to where dongchimi was set down in writing. The Dongguk sesigi (東國歲時記), in which Hong Seok-mo (洪錫謨) of late Joseon recorded the customs of the year month by month, writes under the eleventh month of a kimchi made from small turnip roots and gives its name as the two characters 冬沈: "取蔓菁根小者作菹名曰冬沈 以乾柿沈熟水和生薑海松子名曰水正果 皆冬節時食也," small turnip (蔓菁) roots are taken and made into kimchi, which is called dongchim (冬沈); dried persimmons steeped in boiled water with ginger and pine nuts are called sujeonggwa (水正果); all are foods of the winter season. The vegetable the almanac names is the turnip rather than the radish, but the picture of small whole roots steeped for the winter is that of today's dongchimi. Winter, steep. As Urimalsaem records, dongchim is the Hangeul spelling of the Sino-Korean dongchim (冬沈), to which -i was attached to give dongchim-i, so these two characters in the almanac are the Chinese-character root of the word dongchimi. Under the same month the same book has "用蕎麥麵沈菁菹菘菹和猪肉名曰冷麵," buckwheat noodles put into turnip kimchi and cabbage kimchi and mixed with pork, which is called naengmyeon. The almanac does not say that this turnip kimchi (菁菹) is the 冬沈 itself, but the scene of noodles put into winter kimchi broth on a winter night stands in the same month as 冬沈 in a late Joseon record of the seasons. Meanwhile the table of contents of the 1869 printed edition of the Gyuhap chongseo (閨閤叢書), in which Lady Yi of Bingheogak set down the ways of household management in Hangeul, lists dongchim-i (as cited in Urimalsaem's historical note), showing that a nineteenth-century household book called this kimchi by that name. The kimchi that the classical-Chinese almanac wrote as 冬沈 and the Hangeul household book as dongchim-i comes to the table today under the name dongchimi. Q: What are the Chinese characters of dongchimi, and how is its origin explained? A: Dongchim (冬沈), dong (冬), "winter," and chim (沈), "to steep," took the native suffix -i to become dongchim-i, which settled as dongchimi, spelled as spoken. The sense "steeped in winter" sits in the name as it is. Dongchimi and gimjang are often set side by side, but they name different things. Gimjang is the making of a whole winter's kimchi in one batch around Ipdong, or all the kimchi so made; dongchimi is the name of one kimchi within that gimjang, radishes steeped lightly in brine and eaten broth and all. If cabbage kimchi is the body of gimjang, dongchimi is its broth. It is made when the gimjang is done and the weather turns cold once more, and it ripens slowly in a crock buried in the ground. Q: How does dongchimi differ from gimjang? A: Gimjang names the whole work of making winter kimchi in one batch; dongchimi names one winter radish kimchi within it, whole radishes steeped in brine and eaten with their broth. This is how dongchimi is used today. Dongchimi guksu and dongchimi makguksu are noodle dishes that take dongchimi broth as their stock as it is; the clear broth of a naengmyeon house also carries dongchimi broth; and on a winter night a bowl of dongchimi with a skin of ice sits beside hot sweet potatoes. Between the night of 27 October 2026 and the following morning, newspapers reported cold-wave advisories in force across most of the country (Financial News and Newsis, 28 October). Eleven days on, the seventh of November, is Ipdong, the start of winter, so this is the time when dongchimi, the winter kimchi made at the first cold, earns its name again. Dongchimi is a name given to a kimchi that steeps winter itself. Inside its characters are 冬, a knotted cord that marked an end, and 沈, sinking into water; after them the Korean tail -i that settled into the spoken shape dongchimi; the 冬沈 and the naengmyeon broth that the Dongguk sesigi recorded; and the winter night when buckwheat noodles were put into a broth that had ripened under a skin of ice in a buried crock. Dongchimi, "winter, steep": a Korean word for the kimchi in which whole radishes sunk in winter become broth.