Haejang-guk해장국

The "haejang" in haejang-guk comes from haejeong (解酲), a Sino-Korean word for sobering up. The story goes that haejang won out because its jang was easier to associate with jang (腸), the gut, than the obscure character for a hangover. Some trace the dish to seongjutang (醒酒湯), a "sobering soup" that appears in the old Chinese-language textbook Nogeoldae, though others argue that was simply the Chinese word for any such soup, not the ancestor of the Korean one.

The most lavish hangover soup on record is hyojonggaeng (曉鐘羹), "dawn-bell soup." According to Choe Yeong-nyeon's Haedong jukji, published in 1925, people inside the fortress town of Gwangju, south-east of Seoul, simmered cabbage hearts, bean sprouts, pine and shiitake mushrooms, beef, sea cucumber and abalone in doenjang all day long. At night the pot was wrapped in a quilt and sent off to Seoul, reaching the homes of high officials just as the dawn bell rang, still warm.

Every region has its own take. Old Seoul haejang-guk was a doenjang soup of beef-bone broth with bean sprouts, cabbage and radish, finished with ox blood. It had a slightly bitter edge, it is said, because the soup houses went door to door buying up households' stale doenjang. Cheongjin-dong's version was especially famous. Jeonju turned to bean sprout soup with rice, while in Uljin on the east coast people revived themselves with ojingeo mulhoe guksu: thin strips of tender raw squid and noodles in cold water.