Where's The Pollack?

Two clichés in K drama: First, a fierce ajumma hits a young upstart with the wooden sticks used to beat or flatten the laundry OR second, she uses a stick-like object which turns out to be pollack, a wind-dried fish popular in Korea. Unfortunately, over-fishing and over-eating of even the young pollack may have driven this fish to the edge of extinction so ajummas inclined to whack the living daylights out of someone may be hard-pressed to look for a handy pollack. ( The info for the graph created below was taken from the JoongAng Daily. )

Alarmed by this trend, the East Sea Fisheries Institute of the National Fisheries Research and Development Center has offered ten times the market rate for anyone who brings in a live pollack so that the experts there can retrieve the eggs for a rehabilitation program. Turns out it isn’t so easy to breed pollack in captivity. So the alternative has been to collect eggs from freshly –caught pollack.

Hopefully they’ll find a way of reversing the trend in the declining pollack population so that future generations of Koreans and tourists can enjoy pollack soup and fiery ajummas won’t lack dried-up pollacks whenever they feel like whacking someone.

"This fish is called myeongtae when they are alive in the sea, but they are called saengtae when they are caught. They are named dongtae when frozen and when they are hung and dried here, they are finally called hwangtae. Since they are string-skewered through their noses, they are called hwangtae kodari." ( quote from KBS World Radio article, "Discover Inje's Treasure In the Winter Season")

For KBS World Radio feature article on pollack, click here.
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2916198