Andong soju Artisan Information

Division	Park Jae-seo	Joe Ok-wha
Appointed master	Park Jae-seo	Joe Ok-wha
Appointed Date	1995.07.15	2000.09.18
Master No.	No.6	No.20
Appointed Detali	Artisan of Andong soju	Artisan of Andong soju

Andong soju (hangul

Hangul

Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...

: 안동소주; hanja

Hanja

Hanja is the Korean name for the Chinese characters hanzi. More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation...

: 安東燒酎) is a kind of distilled soju

Soju

Soju is a distilled beverage native to Korea. Its taste is comparable to vodka, though often slightly sweeter due to sugars added in the manufacturing process, and more commonly consumed neat.Most brands of soju are made in South Korea...

 produced in Andong

Andong

Andong is a city in Gyeongsangbuk-do Province, South Korea. It is the largest city in the northern part of the province with a population of 167,821 in October 2010. The Nakdong River flows through the city...

, Gyeongsangbuk-do

Gyeongsangbuk-do

Gyeongsangbuk-do or shortly Gyeongbuk is a province in eastern South Korea. The province was formed in 1896 from the northern half of the former Gyeongsang province, remained a province of Korea until the country's division in 1945, then became part of South Korea.The Gyeongsangbuk-do Office is...

.

Brewage

The process of making the nuruk (fermentation starter) of Andong soju is: wash and dry wheat, crush it, and mix it with water by hand. Then spread out a bojagi

Bojagi

Bojagi or bo for short is a traditional Korean wrapping cloth. Bojagi are square and can be made from a variety of materials, though silk is common...

 (a cloth made of ramie

Ramie

Ramie is a flowering plant in the nettle family Urticaceae, native to eastern Asia. It is a herbaceous perennial growing to 1–2.5 m tall; the leaves are heart-shaped, 7–15 cm long and 6–12 cm broad, and white on the underside with dense small hairs—this gives it a silvery appearance;...

), play a circular frame on top of the bojagi, pour in the mixed nuruk, add one more bojagi on top of this and turn it over by foot, flattening the mix. Then remove the nuruk from its frame and ferment it for 20 days. Next, after crushing it, dry it for a day, and to get rid of the smell of the gokja (hangul: 곡자; another word for nuruk), let it accumulate dew for one night.

When making the hard-boiled rice, wash and soak rice in water and steam it in a rice steamer. Finished hard-steamed rice is smooth and has a polish. Put it on a straw mat in the shade and cool it.

When both the nuruk and hard-steamed rice are completed, mix them by hand and put them in a liquor jug with water for more than about 15 days. When it has aged, its color is yellowish, and it should have a savory taste.

Boil the aged liquor in a sot (hangul: 솥; a traditional Korean pot) and put a sojugeori (hangul: 소주걸이; a traditional Korean tool used for filtering liquor) and a cooling device on the sot, and spread sirutbun (hangul: 시룻번; dough used to make an air-tight seal) on the gap between the sojugeori and cooling device so that no steam escapes. When the aged liquor is heated, it then vaporizes, and the vaporized steam is cooled by the cold water in the cooling device. Then soju flows out via the pipe in the sojugeori, and you have Andong soju.

Origin

It is presumed that the development of soju in Andong is related to the Yuan Dynasty

Yuan Dynasty

The Yuan Dynasty , or Great Yuan Empire was a ruling dynasty founded by the Mongol leader Kublai Khan, who ruled most of present-day China, all of modern Mongolia and its surrounding areas, lasting officially from 1271 to 1368. It is considered both as a division of the Mongol Empire and as an...

's influx into the Korean Peninsula

Korean Peninsula

The Korean Peninsula is a peninsula in East Asia. It extends southwards for about 684 miles from continental Asia into the Pacific Ocean and is surrounded by the Sea of Japan to the south, and the Yellow Sea to the west, the Korea Strait connecting the first two bodies of water.Until the end of...

 in the 13th century, because the Yuan Dynasty's supply base that was aiming for an expedition to Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 was in Andong.

Andong sojus origin dates to the Silla

Silla

Silla was one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, and one of the longest sustained dynasties in...

 period. The distillation skill developed by alchemists in Arab regions, people of the Silla were engaging in entrepot trade actively with Arab nations at that time. Warrior statues with exotic features and Persian

Persian

Persian means of, from, or related to Persia , or the Persian-speaking world. See:* Persian people, the majority ethnic group of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan* Persian language, an Iranian language of the Indo-European family...

 glass found at Goereung (hangul: 괘릉; an ancient tomb of Silla in Gyeongju

Gyeongju

Gyeongju is a coastal city in the far southeastern corner of North Gyeongsang province in South Korea. It is the second largest city by area in the province after Andong, covering with a population of 269,343 people according to the 2008 census. Gyeongju is southeast of Seoul, and east of the...

, Gyeongsangbuk-do is regarded as proof of this relation between Silla and Arab regions. From that time, the brewing of hard liquor was passed down with Persian glass. Also, China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 had been drinking hard liquor from the period of the Tang Dynasty

Tang Dynasty

The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...

. Through the close relationship between Silla and the Tang Dynasty, it can be presumed that hard liquor was drunken in Korea since the Silla period.

Artisan

The artisans of Andong soju are Joe Ok-wha(hangul: 조옥화; hanja: 趙玉花) and Park Jae-seo(hangul: 박재서). They alive the traditional ways of making Andong soju alive through the Korean government's active support for discovering traditional liquors since the 1986 Asian Games

1986 Asian Games

The 10th Asian Games were held from September 20, 1986 to October 5, 1986 in Seoul, South Korea. The city was supposed to host the 1970 games, but it received security threats from neighboring North Korea, forcing it to give up hosting the games to previous 1966 host Bangkok, Thailand...

 and 1988 Summer Olympics

1988 Summer Olympics

The 1988 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIV Olympiad, were an all international multi-sport events celebrated from September 17 to October 2, 1988 in Seoul, South Korea. They were the second summer Olympic Games to be held in Asia and the first since the 1964 Summer Olympics...

.

After the Silla period, the skills of making Andong soju were passed down in Andong. Joe Ok-wha makes and preserves this Andong soju, so she was designated as "Gyeongsangbuk-do intangible cultural property No.12" on May 13th, 1987, and she was also designated as "Korean food grand master No.20" on September 18th, 2000. Now her daughter-in-law Bae Kyong-hwa (hangul: 배경화) and son Kim Yeon-park (hangul: 김연박) continue the tradition.

Park Jae-seo is Ban Nam-park (hangul: 반남박)'s descendant in the 25th generation of carrying on the legacy of Andong soju that has been passed down in his family for 500 years. For preserving this tradition, Park Jae-seo was designated as "Korean food grand master No.6" in July, 1995.

Andong soju is the only specialty to have two Korean food grand masters, because Joe Ok-wha and Park Jae-seo's way of making it and materials are different from each other.