If you are a foreigner drinking with your friends in a restaurant in Korea and there are any Koreans in your group or working in the restaurant or in the general vicinity, chances are you will soon find yourself face to face with a live baby octopus. If you don’t know where this is going you need to watch the Korean movie Oldboy.
Basically don’t give the octopus a name, don’t grow attached to it, don’t even look at it too much. Just pick it up, open your mouth, push it in headfirst and swallow. That’s right, apparently you’re supposed to swallow it whole, making sure the tentacles don’t stick to your throat and suffocate you.
A bin full of octopuses at a fish market. Photo by Chris Price.
With this advice in mind I put the head of the octopus in my mouth and was getting ready to swallow when the tentacles started gripping my face, holding on for dear life. Clearly the little guy wasn’t going down without a fight. I made a quick decision to change my strategy and started to chew the crap out of his head. I figured if I killed him quickly, the suction cups would loosen their grip on my nose and my teeth and my cheeks.
Impressively, the octopus had a lot of fight in him; it seemed to take forever until he stopped struggling and in the meantime all the innards and juices and everything were squirting all over the inside of my mouth and running down my throat. Not surprisingly, it didn’t taste especially good.
By the time he stopped struggling, I had pretty much chewed up the whole thing anyway, so I peeled the suction cups off my face, chewed up and swallowed everything and washed it all down with a beer. Actually, beer is probably not the correct word. The closest thing you get in Korea is a foul-tasting, unknown liquid with a slight (very, very slight) beer flavor. Or, if you prefer your drinks without a beer flavor, most places also sell Budweiser.
Eating a live octopus in Korea is one of those things you try once for the experience, but there’s really no need to repeat it. Nevertheless, a few months later, I found myself in front of another little bowl of water with another little octopus swimming around in it. This time I didn’t even try swallowing him whole. Not as impressive to the Koreans I suppose, but much easier on me and the octopus.
nasty!!
I’ve definitely had better tasting things. I’ve had much, much worse, too, though.
Many Koreans eat octopus that is alive. That’s right. but that type of octopus needs to be cut for eating which is on the movie “Old boy”. It’s too big to eat up the whole octopus but not Se-bal-nak-ji(means “The octopus with thin legs”).
You’re right and I hope no one tries to copy what they did in the movie. That said, I’m pretty sure the actor actually did eat a live octopus for that scene.
Wow, you are a fucked up individual. You can experience the culture of a country without joining on disgusting acts such as these. I hope that you realize what you did amounts to torture. Karma Karma Karma.
You seem fun! Thanks for commenting!
Thanks for writing about your experience. Why do you bother replying to hypothetical idiots who think they have the right to impose their self-deluded beliefs on you? Enjoy yourself and stay safe at the same time.
Hey i have to ask, did you not feel sad for the poor creature struggling to stay alive? What makes it so worthless that you would do such a thing? You got to try and set yourself in they’re perspective. The pain and the fear. You are the intelligent one. You have a choice which animals don’t. Also boiling lobsters is also quite cruel but at least they die quickly. You seem to have low empathy for animals based on you’re posts i would just like to know why. Thanks in advance if you reply
Of course, but the octopus was going to be eaten by someone, if not me. Also, it would have been a bit insulting to my hosts’ culture to refuse to eat it and, worse, to lecture them on animal cruelty.
Just as you accuse me of having no empathy for animals, you could be accused of being insensitive to other cultures. We all have to make personal decisions on where we draw the lines.
I tend to adapt to the local culture, but there is a limit. I will eat an octopus, for example, but I refused to attend a bullfight when I lived in Spain. Is there a difference? To me there is and my personal line is drawn somewhere between the two. You obviously draw your line elsewhere. I hope you can understand and accept the difference. And believe me, I understand how you feel. I would never choose to eat a live animal like that under normal circumstances.
Wow, people are chewing you up worse than you chewing that octopus lol. Eating a live octopus actually sounds kinda badass…. maybe I’m just saying that after watching Oh Dae su do it.