Mission Endure 67: Building a Scavenger Mentality

I was reading earlier today and came across an article by Fabian Ommar in The Organic Prepper, titled “Scavenging: It’s Not Just When the SHTF. It’s Already a Way of Life for Many.” It brought me back to the difference in lifestyle I witnessed when I lived in SongTan, South Korea in 2000-2001. I had traveled around the world in my job for many years as a C-130 Navigator in the US Air Force, and I was very familiar with different lifestyles and cultures, but I had never spent more that about 2 months living in any one place outside the US, so I was not intimately dealing with the differences in culture until I lived in Korea. Korea was different and it stretched my worldview in many different ways.

During my year in Korea I chose to spend as much time as possible getting immersed in the Korean culture. If I was going to live there for a year I wanted to learn as much as I could about the people there. I had the honor of working side-by-side with several South Korean Air Force Officers. I constantly pestered them with questions about things that I found unusual about life in Korea. One day after a long bike ride the night before I asked them. "How come I never seen any dead roadkill on the highways in Korea? In the US there are always deer, cats, dogs, or snakes that have been run over by cars, but I never see them in Korea." They told me that right after the Korean War the country was in such a state of poverty and that the people were so hungry they ate anything that moved, including most of the wildlife in Korea. After the Korean war their country was so depleted that they had to become hunters, gatherers, and foragers again just to survive the leanness of the post-war years. Even snakes had become one more food source for them to continue living. There were very few animals, trees, and edible food even in the countryside. To be honest, that shocked me. Back at home here the countryside is where we find the most variety of wildlife, not so much in Korea.

I had lunch almost every day with my Korean counterparts and I soon became a lover of Korean food. I found one of my favorite Korean foods when I was feeling horrible with a bad cold. A friend took me to a Korean restaurant and ordered me dinner. He told me that it would be very spicy, but it would help to sweat the cold right out of me. I tried it and it was very tasty and quickly became my favorite Korean dish. It is called Budae Chigae. When we think of traditional American food most of us think of Hamburgers, Hotdogs, Apple Pie, and Ice Cream. My Korean friends told me that Budae Chigae is one of their traditional dishes and was created after the Korean War as a result of scavenging. In fact, they told me that the translation for the words Budae Chigae is “Military Base Leftover Stew.” Here is an article that tells the history of Budae Chigae and confirms the heritage of the dish and includes a simple recipe. Link. This recipe makes a Budae Chigae as a clear soup, but there are thousands of different recipes for Budae Chigae and the version of it that I like was more like a Gumbo as shown in the below photo. When the Koreans had no food they would scavenge the leftovers from the US military base dining halls looking for anything that was edible. So, Budae Chigae is made from a variety of meats and veggies. My favorite recipe includes sliced hot dogs, spam, shrimp, sausage, noodles, rice, celery, onion, mushroom, and peppers. The version I had was very hot and my friend was right. It sweated the cold right out of me! I felt fine the next day.

Koreans, in general, are a very hard-working and resourceful group of people. I know the Korean War is still not over today, but the Korean War Armistace was signed in 1953 and aside from a few small skirmishes most of the fighting has stopped. It has given the people and the land of South Korea a bit of time to recover. Life was sure difficult right after the war and still continues to be very different than life here in the US today as they live under the threat of North Korea right next to them. The threat still looms in their subconscious today. There is a lot we can learn from the South Koreans when it comes to living more simply and less wastefully. As Americans we live in the most affluent society in the world. It is amazing how something as simple as a bowl of hot and spicy Budae Chigae can make you reflect on what is important in life.

I believe we should live a life with a more careful stewardship of our resources in it. We waste an enormous amount of food and other materials that people in other places would love to have. We have many people making a living from renovating, recycling, and reusing resources, and that is a wonderful thing to do. But, getting the most use out of the resources we already have is an art that my grandparents and parents did much better than I do. I find myself asking almost daily, what would my grandparents do with this? My favorite Korean food Budae Chigae is both very tasty and also a great lesson in how scavenging can make our lives better.