Kudzu.....and a Lesson

Howdy Kampers:

Well, I have to confess that every time I think I've seen it all, Korea surprises me with something different. In this episode, we observe the validity of the the English truisms that one man's meat is another man's poison and that one man's treasure is another man's trash. Lest I lose the ability to distinguish treasure from trash, I try to remind myself that I am on the opposite side of the world and that each side appears to mirror the other in reverse. While in college, I studied this philosophical culmination of opposites (Thank you Dr. Christiansen and Dr. Hogan) and, after forty or so years I'm living it out in real time and living color. So....what does the foregoing drivel actually mean? In a word--KUDZU!

I won't recount the already well-known nature of kudzu except to note that, if the story of kudzu is ever made into a horror film it could be appropriately titled, "The Curse That Would Not Die". The Korean version of the same film would probably be, "Kudzu--Gift of the Gods". The stuff grows both in the wild and in CULTIVATED FIELDS. Believe it or not Ripley, Koreans actually PLANT kudzu seeds and harvest the stuff as animal fodder. They say that pigs and goats especially thrive on it and cattle will eat it if grain or forage is in short supply. Koreans even have a special harvesting machine that gathers the leaves and prunes the vines so they'll grow better. (If they tell me they're cross-breeding to produce improved varieties of kudzu I'll be on the next plane out of here!) I've seen the tank-tracked harvesters they use in the rice paddies around my school so I'm trying to imagine the piece of ingenuity Koreans have developed for dealing with kudzu.

So, the bane of Georgia (and The American Southland) that we spray with weed control and treat as trash is actually a renewable treasure trove of food in Korea and only 11,000 miles and a world of attitudinal differences separates our perceptions. I'll leave you to ponder that while I go down the street for a hamburger dressed with kudzu (oops, I mean lettuce) and tomato (extra mustard, please and hold the kimchee).

Til later,

Bill
The Kudzu Kaper Kid