VOL.93/2026.04

A Confession Told Through Tteok

2025.12.01

Tteok (떡; rice cake), which topped the latest K-Book Trends survey as Korea’s No. 1 signature dessert, is a traditional Korean food made by steaming and pounding grains such as mepssal (멥쌀; non-glutinous rice) or chapssal (찹쌀; glutinous rice) into powder and shaping it by hand. Tteok is not only served during major celebrations such as national holidays, birthdays, weddings, and ancestral rites, but is also enjoyed casually by many Koreans in daily life. There is a wide variety of tteok in Korea - from mujigae-tteok (무지개떡; rainbow-colored tteok), siru-tteok (시루떡; layered tteok topped with red beans), injeolmi (인절미; sticky tteok coated with soybean powder), and susupat-tteok (수수팥떡; red-bean-coated sorghum tteok), to omegi-tteok (오메기떡; sweet-millet tteok rolled in bean powder, especially enjoyed on Jeju Island). Their shapes, flavors, and meanings are just as diverse.
The white, long garae-tteok (가래떡; cylindrical tteok made with non-glutinous rice flour) symbolizes purity and longevity, just like its clean color and long shape. So, on Seollal (설날; Lunar New Year’s Day), people eat tteokguk (떡국; soup made with sliced garae-tteok) to greet the new year with a clean heart and wish for good health. When a baby turns one hundred days old, families share white baekseolgi (백설기; white, usually box-shaped steamed tteok) with their neighbors, as it represents purity and a wish for a long, healthy life. During Chuseok (추석; Korean Thanksgiving), people enjoy songpyeon (송편; half-moon-shaped tteok filled with sesame, red beans, or other ingredients and steamed over pine needles) to celebrate the harvest and express gratitude to their ancestors. Also, on suneung (수능; the College Scholastic Ability Test) day, chapssal-tteok is shared as a token of luck, wishing students’ answers will come together perfectly - just as glutinous rice holds firmly together. Beyond desserts, tteok also appears in iconic dishes such as tteokbokki, a global K-food favorite. It’s no surprise, then, that tteok was chosen as the No. 1 Korea’s signature dessert.

This month’s issue introduces Ssug-tteok (Moonyebada) by Baek Si-Jong. The book is a collection of seven interconnected short stories inspired by the author’s life spanning over eighty years. The author calls the work a kind of “confession told through food,” reflecting on his past. In the post-war years of poverty, hunger blinded the protagonist and a boy named “Sunam” to everything but food. For them, eating was survival itself - they cast aside manners and morality in what the author calls “acts done for the sake of eating.” Through foods like ssug-tteok (mugwort tteok), he reveals his memories of shame, survival, and yearning. Here, tteok is more than just a food - it is a symbol of memory and wounds, a bridge to family ties, survival, and social standing. As the protagonist grows older, the scent of ssug-tteok recalls the struggles of his youth and becomes a bittersweet confession of remorse.
Along with the title story Ssug-tteok, this full-length novel presents a series of food-themed stories centered on dishes such as samgye-tang (삼계탕; ginseng chicken soup), barley rice, margarine soy-sauce bibimbap, and soybean-paste perilla leaves - each reflecting the flavors and spirit of its era. Each story feels like an independent tale, yet as a whole, the book is like a coming-of-age novel that depicts a person’s life. Perhaps it is the author’s own journal of growth, saying that the foods once stolen, picked up from the ground, and taken away for survival in childhood are now tasted, enjoyed, and remembered with nostalgia.