There is a Korean folktale in which a tiger, the most feared animal in the mountains, is frightened away not by fire or weaponry but by the mention of a single word — gotgam. A crying child is told that a tiger has come outside. The child keeps crying. Then the mother says that gotgam has arrived. The child stops immediately. The tiger, hearing this, concludes that gotgam must be something even more fearsome than itself and retreats into the forest.
The story is told to children as a gentle piece of humor. But embedded within it is a real piece of cultural history. Gotgam — dried persimmon — was rare enough, desirable enough, and associated with enough pleasure that a child would stop crying at the promise of it. In a food culture where sweetness was not easily or cheaply obtained, that response was not hyperbole. It was a reasonable reflection of what gotgam actually meant.
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| Gotgam — the white powder on the surface is naturally occurring sugars, not added coating |
Understanding why gotgam held such value across Korean history requires understanding the conditions under which it was made, the effort and geography it demanded, and what it represented within a food economy where preserved sweetness was a scarce and significant thing.
The Persimmon Itself
The persimmon — gam (감) in Korean — is a fruit that grows across a wide range of climates in East Asia and has been cultivated on the Korean peninsula for centuries. The fresh fruit exists in multiple varieties, ranging from non-astringent types that can be eaten crisp and raw to astringent varieties that are deeply tannic when unripe and must be either fully ripened to softness or processed before they become palatable.
It is from the astringent varieties — particularly the bansi and dungsi cultivars grown in specific regions of Korea — that gotgam is made. The paradox of gotgam is that it begins with a fruit that is, in its raw unprocessed state, nearly inedible. The tannins in an unripe astringent persimmon produce a puckering, drying sensation in the mouth that makes it deeply unpleasant to eat. Transforming that fruit into something sweet, complex, and shelf-stable requires a specific process carried out under specific conditions over an extended period of time.
This transformation is not a simple drying operation. It is a careful, sequential process that demands the right climate, the right timing, and consistent manual attention across several weeks. The fact that the end result is so different from the starting material — that something astringent and harsh becomes something sweet and layered — is part of what gave gotgam its character as a food that embodied patience and craft.
A Process That Cannot Be Rushed
Gotgam production begins in late autumn, after the first cold air arrives but before temperatures drop below freezing consistently. The persimmons are harvested while still firm, peeled by hand, and hung on wooden racks or strung on ropes in outdoor drying structures that allow cold mountain air to circulate freely around each fruit.
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| The drying process requires weeks of mountain air and careful handling — scale and patience both matter |
The location matters significantly. The regions of Korea historically associated with the finest gotgam production — Sangju and Cheongsong in North Gyeongsang Province, and Hamyang in South Gyeongsang Province — share specific characteristics: altitude, cold dry winter air with low humidity, and sufficient sunlight during the drying period. These conditions draw moisture from the fruit slowly and evenly, preventing the surface from hardening too quickly before the interior has dried sufficiently. Too much humidity causes mold. Too much direct heat dries the surface before the interior, producing a texture that is hard outside and still moist in an undesirable way inside.
As the fruit dries over the first several weeks, producers massage each persimmon by hand at regular intervals — a process called mureumjil (무름질). This manual manipulation breaks down the internal fiber structure, encourages even moisture distribution, and helps develop the characteristic soft, yielding texture of properly made gotgam. It also prevents the skin from cracking, which would expose the interior to air in ways that disrupt the drying process.
After approximately four to six weeks of drying and repeated handling, the persimmons are moved to a cold, dark storage environment — traditionally a cellar or a shaded indoor space — where they undergo a final transformation. The sugars that have concentrated as moisture evaporated migrate to the surface and crystallize into the white powder — sikhae (시해) — that coats a finished gotgam. This powder is not mold, not added sugar, and not a coating applied after the fact. It is the fruit's own concentrated sweetness, expressed through the skin as the internal sugars reach equilibrium with the cold air.
The entire process from harvest to finished gotgam takes between six and ten weeks under optimal conditions. Each stage requires attention, judgment, and the right environmental conditions. This is not a food that can be produced on an accelerated timeline or in climates that do not provide the necessary cold dry air of a Korean mountain winter. The geography and the season are ingredients as much as the fruit itself.
Sweetness as Scarcity
To understand why gotgam was valuable, it is necessary to understand what sweetness meant in the Korean diet across most of its history. Refined sugar was not a readily available commodity in Korea until the twentieth century. Honey existed but was expensive and not produced in quantities sufficient to make it a routine pantry item for most households. Yeot — a traditional Korean confection made from glutinous rice or other grains — provided sweetness but required significant grain input and production effort.
Natural fruit sweetness, available seasonally, was one of the primary sources of sweet flavor in the diet. Fresh persimmons were available in autumn, but their season was short and the fruit did not keep. Gotgam solved this problem by extending persimmon sweetness through the winter and into the following year, creating a concentrated sweet food that could be stored and accessed over months rather than days.
The concentration effect of the drying process is significant. A fresh persimmon contains sweetness diluted by its high water content. As that water is removed during drying, the sugars remaining in the fruit become proportionally more concentrated. A finished gotgam is substantially sweeter than the fresh fruit it came from, and the texture — dense, chewy, almost confection-like — delivers that sweetness more intensely than the fresh version could.
In a food environment where sweetness was scarce and seasonal, gotgam functioned as something closer to a confection than a fruit. It was a sweet food that could be preserved, transported, stored, and presented — and those qualities made it valuable in ways that perishable fresh fruit could not be.
From Royal Tables to Ancestral Rites
Gotgam's value was recognized and formalized at multiple levels of Korean society, from royal court cuisine to the ceremonial foods prepared for ancestral memorial rites at the household level.
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| Gotgam paired with sujeonggwa — a combination that appeared on Korean royal tables and ceremonial spreads for centuries |
In Joseon court cuisine, gotgam appeared as a component of sujeonggwa — a cold punch made from dried persimmon, cinnamon, and ginger that was served as a digestive and refreshment at formal occasions. The combination of gotgam's concentrated sweetness with the warmth of cinnamon and ginger produced a drink that was considered refined and appropriate for formal court settings. Gotgam also appeared in court confections, folded and filled with nuts or combined with other preserved ingredients to produce sweets served alongside tea.
At the household level, gotgam held a fixed place in jesa — the ancestral memorial rites practiced by Korean families across class lines, in which food offerings are arranged on a ceremonial table and presented to deceased ancestors. The specific foods included on a jesa table follow traditional categories, and dried fruits — with gotgam among the most important — occupy a designated position in the arrangement. This ceremonial role meant that gotgam was not only a food for the living but a food considered appropriate for offering to ancestors — a status that reflects its perceived quality and significance within the food hierarchy.
The fact that gotgam appeared on both royal tables and ancestral rite tables is telling. It occupied the upper register of Korean food culture simultaneously in contexts of living luxury and ceremonial reverence. That dual presence across such different settings speaks to how completely its value was recognized across Korean society.
Regional Identity and Craft Knowledge
Gotgam production became deeply tied to the specific regions whose geography supported it, and those regions developed the craft knowledge and reputation that differentiated their products from inferior versions made in less suitable conditions.
Sangju in North Gyeongsang Province became historically synonymous with gotgam production to such a degree that the city's identity is still substantially defined by it. The particular conditions of the Sangju basin — altitude, winter climate, and the accumulated generations of producer knowledge about timing, handling, and storage — produced a gotgam that was recognized as superior and commanded a premium accordingly. Cheongsong and Hamyang developed their own reputations through similar combinations of favorable geography and transmitted craft knowledge.
This regional specificity meant that gotgam was also a trade good — something produced in volume in specific locations and distributed to urban markets and other regions where the climate did not support production. The transportation of gotgam from mountain production areas to cities and towns was part of the traditional Korean trade network, and the geographic concentration of production in identifiable regions reinforced its status as a specialty product rather than a generic commodity.
The craft knowledge required to produce fine gotgam — knowing when to harvest, how to peel without damaging the fruit, how frequently and how firmly to massage during drying, how to read the surface bloom as an indicator of quality — was accumulated within producing families and communities over generations. This knowledge was not written down or formally codified. It was demonstrated, practiced, and passed from experienced producers to apprentices through the physical process of working alongside them. The intangible expertise embedded in regional gotgam production was as much a part of the product's value as the fruit and the climate.
Gotgam in Contemporary Korea
Gotgam has not disappeared from Korean food culture. It remains in production in its traditional regions, available at markets and online, and present on jesa tables and in seasonal gift sets during the autumn and winter period. Sujeonggwa continues to be made at home and served at Korean restaurants as a traditional beverage. Gotgam-filled with walnuts — gotgam ssam (곶감쌈) — has remained a standard traditional confection, present at celebrations and formal occasions.
What has changed is the context. In contemporary Korea, sweetness is not scarce. Sugar is inexpensive and available in endless forms. The urgency that once attached to a sweet preserved food — the sense that it represented something rare and obtained through significant effort — does not translate automatically to a generation for whom sweet foods are routine. Gotgam is now understood as a traditional food, a seasonal specialty, a regional product of quality — but the visceral value it once carried as concentrated sweetness in a diet where sweetness was genuinely hard to come by requires historical context to fully appreciate.
That historical context is worth recovering, because it illuminates something about how food value is constructed. Gotgam was not valuable because it was declared valuable by an authority or marketed into significance. It was valuable because it solved a real problem — how to preserve and concentrate natural sweetness through a physically demanding process that required specific geography, specific timing, and accumulated human skill — in a food environment where that problem mattered enormously.
The tiger in the folktale ran from gotgam because the child's reaction told it something important. Whatever this thing was, it was worth more than the threat of a tiger. In the specific conditions of Korean food history, that assessment was not far wrong.
FRANVIA explains everyday life in Korea — not as a destination, but as a place people actually live.
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