Shared Flavors , Shared Memories
From the North, Carried South
What began as a way to survive, a fermented dish made from unsold fish, became something carried across loss, war, and generations.
What began as a way to survive, a fermented dish made from unsold fish, became something carried across loss, war, and generations.
They called her sapse eomeoni (삽세 어머니) because she wandered the docks calling out “sapse,” meaning “buy,” as she tried to sell fish. When food was scarce, letting unsold fish spoil was unthinkable. It was her who began making sikhae (식해) with the fish she could not sell that day, a salty fermented side dish most commonly made with flounder, as in gajami sikhae (가자미식해).
I first heard her story through a documentary about displaced families in Sokcho. After fleeing the North during the Korean War, she settled in a small fishing village in Sokcho, where she raised three children on her own. Making sikhae was first a way to survive, but it also became a way to hold on to something familiar from home.
As her son tells this story, his voice breaks. He cries remembering the hardship his mother carried, not only to feed her children, but to keep a piece of their lost home alive. Today, he is one of the few second-generation war refugees still continuing the sikhae-making tradition after his mother passed away.
Sikhae is a traditional fermented dish from Hamgyeong-do, in what is now North Korea. After the Korean War, many refugees from the region settled in Sokcho, forming a small community that became known as Abai Maeul.
Close enough to the border to see what they could never return to, food became a way to cope with loss, displacement, and longing.
There is a name for this kind of cooking: silhyangmin eumsik (실향민 음식) , food made by people who lost not just their hometown, but the possibility of return.
Alongside sikhae, dishes like abai sundae (아바이순대), myeongtae sundae (명태순대), and ojingeo sundae (오징어순대) emerged. Ojingeo sundae, a regional adaptation using squid instead of pollock, became one of my favorites. It is a dish I used to eat with my parents growing up, one that was shaped by loss and longing, but one that now brings me back to my own childhood memories of home.
One of Korea’s most widely loved dishes with northern roots is naengmyeon (냉면). Though it is a cold noodle soup, sometimes served with slushy broth, it is eaten year-round, even in winter.
Depending on its origin, it takes different forms:
These variations are not just regional preferences. They trace the paths people took as they fled south.
Milmyeon became popular during the Korean War, when refugees in Busan replaced scarce buckwheat with wheat flour from relief supplies. Its chewy texture and rich broth reflect both necessity and adaptation.
Alongside milmyeon (밀면), Busan became known for dishes shaped by the realities of war and the movement of displaced people.
Busan became the main destination for refugees during the Korean War because it remained under South Korean control and served as the provisional capital. As a port city, it concentrated relief supplies, temporary work, and wartime economic activity.
Refugees arrived with little more than habit and memory. Scarcity shaped what they cooked, and familiar dishes had to be rebuilt with unfamiliar ingredients.
Dishes like dwaeji-gukbap (돼지국밥) emerged by drawing on techniques already familiar from soups such as seolleongtang (설렁탕), substituting pork bones discarded by U.S. military kitchens for scarce beef. The result was a warm, filling, and affordable meal where soup and rice come together in a single bowl. To this day, it remains everyday food for many people, valued not for its history but because it is satisfying and accessible. Like budae-jjigae (부대찌개) , it began as a necessity and stayed because people continued to eat it.
Over time, foods that began as acts of survival often lose their original context. They are eaten simply because they taste good, because they are filling, because they are affordable. The urgency that once shaped them fades, even as the food remains.
But for the families who first made them, these dishes were never just practical. They were ways of holding onto memory when everything else had been lost. Cooking familiar food with unfamiliar ingredients was a way to stay connected to a place they could no longer return to.
That is what silhyangmin eumsik carries. Not nostalgia for the past, but evidence of endurance. These foods survive because people did — adapting, substituting, rebuilding meals from what was available. They are passed down not as symbols of hardship, but as everyday food that quietly carries history.
I ate these foods as everyday meals growing up, unaware that they carried stories of displacement and loss. Many of us eat these dishes without knowing their origins. That, too, is part of the story. Food that once marked loss has become food that sustains daily life. In that sense, silhyangmin eumsik is not only about exile. It is proof of living — of remembering, continuing, and feeding the next generation.
