442: How fried chicken became the silver lining of the Korean War

War is an odd place to reach for silver linings, but given that none of us has the power to change violence in the past, much less influence its proliferation in the present, reaching is often the best we can do. If we must suffer mass destruction and the catastrophic loss of innocent lives in military campaigns fought around the world and through centuries, then searching for meaning in the madness is a moral responsibility more than a simple consolation prize. All we can hope for, when fighting ceases, is for good to come out of it, however humble.

For a lesson in looking on the bright side of life in wartime, consider Korean fried chicken: a bar snack, a whole meal, an appetizer for summertime cookouts, and always a joy to eat no matter where or under what pretense it is served. We like fried food here in the United States, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that we just like frying things; mozzarella sticks, cheese curds, pickles, catfish, onion rings, ice cream, potatoes—oh, glorious potatoes—and on the esoteric side of cuisine, jelly beans, guacamole, Cadbury Creme Eggs, and even beer. Therefore it’s remarkably easy to overlook what distinguishes Korean fried chicken from, say, fried chicken from Popeye’s or KFC, much less to have a think about the former’s roots.

And those roots go deep, more than one thousand years deep, in fact, all the way back to 918-1392 CE—a period throughout which the Goryeo dynasty ruled, and from which the nation’s English name is derived. What’s codified today as Korean fried chicken differs from the chicken Koreans have fried since the Goryeo days, which should come as little surprise. Frying as a cooking technique is as old as the Mesopotamian era, after all, so it stands to reason that it plays a role in the cuisine of disparate cultures across chronology and geography. Put straightforwardly, the Korean people have been frying chicken for a really, really, really long time; but they’ve only been making Korean fried chicken for the last 76 years.

On June 25, 1950, North Korean armed forces trotted over the 38th parallel to invade South Korea, thus commencing the Korean War. Just two days later, U.S. President Harry S. Truman ordered deployment of American forces in response, by air, sea, and land. (Fun fact: he never officially declared war and called the whole thing a police action.) It’s pretty to think the U.S. involved itself in the Korean War out of a sense of duty to allied nations and an obligation to spare civilians from carnage. This is partly true, but elides the desire among American political leaders at the time to show the Soviet Union who was boss. Regardless of the reason, of course, the United States’ participation in the fight for South Korea was nearly immediate: Task Force Smith, the war’s first detachment of American units, made it to Busan on July 1, 1950.

The traditional yarn about how, in the midst of gunfire and ordnance detonations, U.S. GIs got around to passing along American frying methods with Korean locals ties to Thanksgiving. Homesick for the holiday, troops sought to make the best approximation possible of a turkey dinner with the resources available to them. The bad news: turkey wasn’t on the menu. The good news: they went ahead and fried chicken instead, and shared the fruits of their culinary labors with their Korean comrades in arms. What is distinct about American fried chicken comes down to, again, method—which, for the record, deserves to be recognized as both a component of Black American cuisine and a contribution by Black American cooks, who picked up on said method from Scottish slaveholders in the 1800s. As such, credit must be accorded to Black American GIs for introducing this piece of their culture to South Korea.

Double frying, or twice frying, is the key: first fry at a lower temperature, then allow the chicken to cool, then fry again at a higher temperature. This process ensures the chicken cooks properly without burning the coating to cinders, while also allowing opportunity for steam to escape, which prevents the chicken from getting soggy. Think about the last time you had fried chicken—think about the crunch of the crust, the juiciness of the bird, the way those dueling elements harmonize so beautifully in a single bite. Now layer that with the marriage of the cooking method with flavors found in South Korean cooking, a’la gochujang and soy, applied by saucing. For as much as American fried chicken and Korean fried chicken have in common, the interweaving of distinct cultures led to a pair of related but ultimately distinct dishes. If you love one, you’ll likely love the other, but you’ll have unique dining experiences with both because they’re both their own entities.

Then again, in the United States, we don’t have a word to delineate the pairing of fried chicken and beer; we go to a bar, pull up a stool, and order a plate of fried chicken with a frosty one. South Koreans use the compound phrase “chimaek,” joining the words for chicken (chi) and beer (maekju) into a single expression, tailor-made for that moment at the bar. Maybe, three quarters of a century after Black American soldiers handed down their tips for frying chicken to South Korean soldiers, it’s well past time we took a cue from South Korea and came up with a word for one of life’s greatest dining pleasures.