We’ve just got back from a few days travelling on the mainland. We started by taking the ferry from Jeju to Mokpo, a fishing town in the South West.
As a fishing town, there was a fish market as well as lots of fish drying in the sun on racks along the streets.
I can only guess at how hygienic it all is. There’s no attempt to keep the flies off the drying fish, although sometimes there’s an old lady waving a stick, in a casual kind of way, over the fresh fish in the market to keep it free of flies. I should probably be under no illusions about the care and handling of some of the things that end up on my plate.
I have no idea what the different kinds of fish are. I don’t really know if I’ve eaten them, given the different forms in which they’re served.
Whatever, please tell me that I haven’t eaten any of the things below. The photo’s not so good because they’re being kept alive under water, but these really are the most distasteful looking things I’ve seen yet.
Postscript
A colleague has given me a Wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urechis_unicinctus
Wikipedia says “This spoon worm is commonly eaten raw with salt and sesame oil in Korea”.
Maybe you should try to find out what the word hygiene or health and safety is in the local language, then maybe you’ll find a definition and see if it’s the same as how you understand the word. I would be very impressed if you tried eating whatever that underwater thingy is. Let me know what it tastes like.
Even Bear Grylls would go nowhere near those pink worm things!
They look horrid, and eaten raw sounds most unappealing!
When Phil comes I’m sure he will try and ID some of the fish
Is that an ID by taste?
Maybe that’s something to work on…
I found some more about them – about 2/3 of the way down this page
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/2013/04/14/what-lives-at-the-bottom-of-the-mariana-trench-more-than-you-might-think/
Those are the ones! Why anyone would think they look like food is beyond me.