Yakbap약밥

Yakbap (약밥) is also called yaksik or yakban. The yak (藥, literally 'medicine') in its name comes from honey: the old glossary Aeon gakbi explains that Koreans commonly called honey yak, which is why honey-sweetened liquor became yakju, honey cookies became yakgwa and honeyed rice became yakban.

Its origin is linked to a tale in Samguk yusa. On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month in the 10th year of King Soji of Silla (488), a crow is said to have warned the king of danger during an outing, and he escaped by shooting the plotters with his bow. Afterwards the day was set aside as a day for the crows, who were offered sticky rice, and this, the story goes, was the beginning of yakbap. A line in Mogeunjip, a Goryeo-period literary collection, describes mixing sticky rice with oil and honey and adding pine nuts, chestnuts and jujubes, showing that it already looked much like today's dish.

Yakbap is still a seasonal food for Jeongwol Daeboreum, the first full moon of the lunar year, and appears at big celebrations such as 60th birthdays and weddings. It won fans abroad too. Heo Gyun's Domun daejak records that the Chinese loved yakban, learned to make it and called it 'Goryeo rice', and Yeolyang sesigi tells how, when Korean envoys handed it out on the first full moon, the nobles of Yanjing (Beijing) were delighted.