Tried South Chosun Ramen Twice in Yongcheon

“I tried the South Chosun wavy noodles twice in Yongcheon. It was pretty delicious.”

Chung, 52, who recently returned from his business trip to China, encountered four North Koreans at a Korean restaurant in Shenyang, Liaoning in mid-June while he was visiting China. He was glad to hear such stories from them. They were architects working for the South Pyongan Province Urban Design Center and said, “National Defense Commission Chairman Kim Jong-il ordered the restoration of Yongcheon as an international city and to use Chinese cities as a reference. So we are here on a 20-day business trip. There are several other teams besides us who came here.” According to them, it appears that the North Korean government is using Chinese cities as benchmarks for restoring Yongcheon.

However, they also stated, “After a certain period, the government retrieved all the ramen (distributed by South Korea) because South Korea put poison in the ramen distributed in Yongcheon, and many people who ate it had stomach aches.” They added, “There were a lot of bad quality goods among the aids sent by capitalist countries. So the customs house in Sinuiju sorted them out and discarded them.”

Since the Yongcheon explosion on April 22, there have been at least 420,000 packages of ramen sent to North Korean by South Korea. One hundred thousand packages were sent by Hankwang-ho, a South Korean container ship, 250,000 by the Good Neighbors, a civil charity organization, and 70,000 by the Tianjin Ellim Korean Church. This is equivalent to 15 servings of ramen for each Yongcheon resident. It is counted to be at least “two ramen servings per person” even after considering that additional people from other regions came to help Yongcheon. However, there is a good possibility that not 100 percent of these aids were distributed to residents.

North Korean residents are aware that South Korea sent some aid, but they believe most of them came from China. Regarding the Yongcheon explosion, they said, “Since it was too appalling to be seen as an accident, most North Koreans believe it was done by spies.”

zsh75@donga.com