Boshintang Jim

Funny story.

And no, that's not my new nickname. "Boshintang Jim" is "dog soup," in Korean, and the following is a true story.

I was having my adult conversation class today. Once a week for two hours me and a few of the braver non-English teaching...er...teachers at my school sit down for what can sometimes be an excruciating, sometimes an enjoyable, but always an enlightening experience. We started off 6 months ago* with basic stuff like "tell me about your family" and "what kind of books do you like?" and have now progressed into more focused topics such as the environment, Korean history, etc etc, and in so doing we (I) have whittled down a once thriving, if incoherent, class of ~10 or so into a more manageable and more cogent group of 4 reasonably literate ladies.

Anyway, today the topic was pets and animals. I asked each of the attendees if they'd ever had a pet as a child, and if so, what was its story. Unfortunately most of them had not, and so it looked as if this was going to be one of those days of death on which getting them to talk is like squeezing blood out of a turnip. But one lady chimed in.

She had never had a pet, she said, but as a child her brother had. He'd found him in the street, adopted him, and loved him generally as children love dogs for over two years.

But their mother couldn't stand the dog. She connived to dispose of the mangy mutt in all of the usual ways, but nothing worked. Until one day, when the young boy was away from the home and the proprietress of the local boshintang joint sauntered on by. She offered to take the dog off of the mother's hands, and for a good price. The mother agreed.

And so it came to pass that the young boy's beloved pet, whom he had loved and protected and cared for, departed from his company and shuffled off this mortal coil in one of the most horrible ways possible. Naturally, the young boy was devastated and cried for days.

Now, it's not only that the dog was slain and consumed. You see, it's not as if they knock the dog on the head with a hammer and go about their business. That would be humane. But you see, in preparing boshintang, it's apparently necessary to torture the dogs. By whipping them. Until they die. It brings out the proper juices, or something.

So, the little boy's pet was stolen from him, hung from a meat hook, whipped to death and then flayed.

Like I said, funny story.

*Has it been 6 months? Wow.