Mandu만두

Mandu (만두) is thought to have come from China, though no one knows exactly when. The Goryeosa, the official history of the Goryeo dynasty, records that in King Chunghye's reign someone was punished for sneaking into the royal kitchen and stealing mandu, so the dumplings had clearly arrived by the Goryeo period. The Goryeo song Ssanghwajeom is famous for its lyrics about a woman who goes to buy dumplings and has her wrist grabbed by the foreign shopkeeper. The ssanghwa in the title was a steamed bun of fermented wheat dough with a filling, made the same way as Chinese mantou. China, for its part, has a legend that mantou began when the strategist Zhuge Liang offered dough stuffed with meat to the gods in place of human heads.

The names shifted over time. Until the mid-Joseon period, steamed buns of fermented dough were called sanghwa, while thin-skinned dumplings, the jiaozi type, were called mandu. Sanghwa eventually disappeared, and the dumpling side kept the name. At the royal court and in aristocratic homes, cooks made elaborate versions such as eomandu, with wrappers of fish, and gyuasang, shaped like sea cucumbers.

Mandu flourished especially in Pyeongan and Hamgyeong provinces in the north, where buckwheat and wheat grew well. In the northern regions centered on Pyeongan, mandu soup was a must at Lunar New Year, and families also froze dumplings filled with kimjang kimchi to boil in broth later. Pyeonsu, a dumpling from Gaeseong, is still a well-known regional specialty.