"Mullet Soup Cooked in Cold Water" Showing the Love for People

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un said:

"Comrade Kim Il Sung's was a noble life of a people's leader, who regarded ‘The people are my God' as his motto, applied it to his ideas and leadership and turned it into reality."

The lifetime of President Kim Il Sung, who remains still in the hearts of Korean people as the tender-hearted father of people, is intimately associated with many stories that he always paid deep attention to the people's dietary life and made painstaking efforts to develop Korean traditional dishes with a time-honored tradition.

Among them is a heartwarming story that he found the "mullet soup cooked in cold water", the name of which had faded away, and personally taught how to cook it.

President Kim Il Sung convened an enlarged meeting of the executives of Pyongyang City Party Committee on April 13, 1978, saying that from old times Koreans liked to eat meat soup very much. He said that in the past, when there were private restaurants, they cooked and sold a lot of meat soup, and now there are meat soup restaurants in Pyongyang, but they didn't try to cook and sell a lot of meat soup.

He said it showed that our officials still lacked the idea of serving the people, and added that in Pyongyang there was no restaurant where people could eat roast eels, roast cow ribs etc. and even mullet soup, and that Pyongyang was famous for mullet soup from olden times.

In support of his invaluable teachings, restaurants where people could eat various kinds of dishes cooked of mullet and other kinds of fresh fish opened in Pyongyang and other parts of the country, but their service activities failed to satisfy the high intention of President Kim Il Sung who made every possible effort for our people.

At the consultative meeting of senior officials in the economic sector held on March 20, 1989, the President stressed that they should cook the tasty mullet soup with its own special flavour in the restaurants in Pyongyang.

At this meeting, he said that when they cooked mullet soup in restaurants in Pyongyang now, they seasoned it with spiced soy sauce made of powdered red pepper and garlic, or poached eggs in it, which failed to make mullet soup have its own flavour. And he earnestly said if they tried to serve the people who knew well about mullet soup with such seasoned one, they would surely disgrace themselves.

On April 4 1989, a few days afterwards, visiting Okryu Restaurant, President Kim Il Sung said he was told that mullet soup was also cooked and served there. He wondered whether they cooked mullet soup properly, and said that mullet soup could get its own taste only when it was boiled in cold water and that Taedonggang mullet soup was made by catching mullet in the Taedong River and boiling it in its clear water.

He taught in detail how to cook mullet soup, saying that scales should be scraped off from fresh mullets, and then they should be chopped, put into the cooking pot, and then cold water should be poured in, and some peppers should be wrapped in a piece of gauze to be put in for keeping them from floating on the soup, and that if it was boiled well without adding anything else, yellow oil would float on the soup, and it would be very good mullet soup.

He also said if mullet soup was cooked, seasoned with spiced soy sauce, then peculiar flavour of mullet soup would be lost, and it wouldn't be different from a peppery flatfish soup that people in Hamgyong Province liked, thus it would have no taste of fish soup at all.

The devoted efforts made by President Kim Il Sung to develop traditional Korean dishes and better our people's diet were beyond enumeration.

In the afternoon of January 15, 1993, President Kim Il Sung told a senior official working together with him to visit the mullet soup restaurant on a bank of the Taedong River. He said he was told that those days they did not serve the people with mullet soup satisfactorily, instructing him earnestly to inquire into the actual conditions of mullet soup restaurant, that is, whether they served the people with mullet soup regularly and what the people's opinions of mullet soup served there were. He stressed repeatedly that he should not have talks with the service workers at the mullet soup restaurant, but try to listen to the people while really having meals with them.

On returning from the restaurant, the official reported to the President that instead of mullet soup, myongthae (pollack) soup, bean curd soup and pork soup were served at the mullet soup restaurant as they had no mullet.

President Kim Il Sung said that if they put up the signboard of mullet soup restaurant, they should not serve the people with myongthae soup but serve them with mullet soup. Saying that he should see the blueprint for building fishways along the West Sea Barrage no matter how busy he was that day, he held an urgent consultative meeting.

He said there were not many mullets in the Taedong River now, and there were not enough mullets and other kinds of fish coming up in the Taedong River because fishways were not built properly along the West Sea Barrage.

At the meeting, he said, from olden times, Pyongyang was famous for mullet soup, cold noodle, beef soup with rice in it and mung-bean pancake, so people who came to visit Pyongyang didn't think they visited Pyongyang, if they didn't taste mullet soup there. And he earnestly stressed that fishways should be built well, adding that he would send enough work force and funds needed for building the barrage fishways.

On April 30, 1993, a few months later, President Kim Il Sung who held a consultative meeting told an official to let the officials have lunch after the meeting and then send them back, and suddenly asked him if he liked mullet soup cooked in cold water.

The official frankly admitted that he had heard of "mullet soup", but never heard the word "mullet soup cooked in cold water" before. Then, the President said with a smile on his face that the mullet soup cooked in cold water was a famous speciality of Pyongyang, but he could not even hear about it at present.

He also said that there were no officials who worried about it, and that there might be many people who had never had a taste of mullet soup cooked in cold water, which was why he was going to let them eat it for lunch so that they could strongly feel their mistakes.

Listening to what the President said, the official came to realize his deep intention that he personally arranged lunch for officials to awaken some of them, who were indifferent to people's living, to their mistakes.

Looking round the officials happily who gulped down pleasant-tasting mullet soup cooked in cold water in the lunch room, President Kim Il Sung said that it was one of the famous special products of Pyongyang and taught them in detail how to cook it.

He said that "mullet soup cooked in cold water" should be made by taking guts out of mullets, chopping them into small pieces, and boiling them in cold water together with some pepper corns wrapped in a piece of gauze. He stressed that "mullet soup cooked in cold water" should be made by boiling mullets in cold water, and that if mullets were boiled in hot water, such mullet soup didn't have its own flavour, so such mullet soup had been called "mullet soup cooked in cold water" because it was made by boiling mullets in cold water.

The officials could not but admire, looking up to the President who taught plainly how to make "mullet soup cooked in cold water".

Thus, it is impossible to think about "mullet soup cooked in cold water", without the warm love of President Kim Il Sung who made painstaking efforts to ensure our people's happiness and develop the traditional dishes.

Indeed, President Kim Il Sung was the tender-hearted father of Korean people who restored "mullet soup cooked in cold water" which had nearly faded away in their memory and taught how to cook it, and made heartfelt efforts to provide the people with various kinds of fish dishes that taste delicious with much nutrition.