Jumeok-bap주먹밥

No one knows when or where jumeok-bap (주먹밥, "fist rice") began. Easy to make and easy to carry, it seems to have been handy for travelers setting out on long journeys and for feeding many people at once. In farming villages, the mid-work snack brought out to the fields was often just rice balls. Rice was pressed firmly by hand, dipped in salted water or water mixed with sesame oil and ground sesame, and pressed again into a meal that needed no side dishes.

Rice balls were also the food of hard times. Many newspaper reports from the Korean War describe front-line soldiers thawing frozen rice balls with their breath. When rice was sent from home as a comfort gift, there was even a request to send sticky rice, because rice with little stickiness would not hold together as a ball.

One story says a regional specialty grew out of the humble rice ball. At Nambatjang, the old name of Jeonju's Nambu Market, woodcutters crowded in before dawn to sell firewood. When they handed over the frozen rice balls they had brought from home, a soup seller would warm them by pouring hot bean sprout broth over them and draining it off again and again, and this is said to be how Jeonju's toryeom-style bean sprout gukbap was born. After 1992 convenience stores began selling rice balls too, and today the fillings and shapes are endlessly varied.