Quiz question: What is dolsot bibimbap?

Answer: It is a popular dish based on rice with beef, which is mixed in a very hot bowl with other ingredients. It is served with the colorful ingredients separately arranged on top of the rice, and the person eating it will mix them together, adding in a spicy sauce (gochujang – chili pepper paste that is reddish in color) in the amount that they prefer. The other ingredients can include cucumber, mushrooms, zucchini, sprouts, tofu, lettuce, and an egg.

Substitutions of the beef can be chicken, seafood, or more tofu, or the beef can be upgraded to kalbi (galbi), which is short ribs.

More information: Read more on Wikipedia, and recipes here, here, and here.

Video links: Hear the sizzle of the ingredients cooking in the stone pot in this video.

Photo © 2010 KoreanQuiz.com

Quiz question: What is bundaegi? (l번데기 in hangul, the Korean alphabet)

Answer: It is a popular snack often sold on the street (street food as shown in the photo here) and in restaurants, consisting of cooked silkworm pupae. The cost for a serving is about a dollar, and they are served warm or hot, with seasoning.  The seasoning may not be noticed by first-time eaters of this food.

The word bundaegi means pupa or chrysalis.

More information: Read more on Wikipedia, and in this blog post showing canned silkworm pupa and this blog post showing a serving in a cup.

Video links: (1) Frying live silkworm pupae, and (2) some guys eating canned silkworm pupae.

Photo © 2010 KoreanQuiz.com

A written Hangul (Hanguel) test captured on video:

The video is about 8 minutes long.  Leave comments with any translation of the Korean part… at one point the teacher says (in Korean) “I don’t speak Korean well”.

And that video above is only the first part.  The second video is below:

The clip above is almost 6 minutes long.  At one point the word “fighting!” is said, which translates to “Go for it!” and is sometimes prounced “pighting” or “highting” as there is no “f” sound in Korean.  Both movies were from Taebaek City, Gangwon Province.

Here are some links to some web-based quizzes for translating from Korean into English -

• Introductory Korean Language Quiz
• Build your own Korean language quiz
• A fun online test for the names of the planets in Korean quiz

And here is a video quiz (requires ability to understand spoken Korean):