LIFE IN KOREA

Taranaki Daily News, 14 January 1935, Page 6

LIFE IN KOREA

FOOD SUPPLIES DESCRIBED. DOMINION’S MENU APPRECIATED. “It gave me a real thrill when, in the course of my trip home, I got my first taste of New Zealand mutton. New Zealand products are so much richer than the diet I am accustomed to. It is the good pastures and climate that give our products this excellent flavour.” This pleasing comment is the more justifiable, coming as »it did recently from a New* Zealander who, after many years’ exile in a strange land, has returned here cn furlough. Where he has lived for the last six years there is only one cow in the neighbourhood; snow covers the ground for several months of the year; butter, cheese and mutton are never seen on the table; for half the year the pine tree is the only piece of greenery within vision.’ The speaker was Mr. G. A. Gow, a New Zealander, working as a metallurgical engineer in North-western Korea, near to the border of Manchukuo. . “We have a very severe climate there,” he told a Manawatu Times representative. “All the cold winds of Manchukuo sweep down upon us. We have winter for six months of the year, > with the temperature as bad as 14 degrees below

zero. But there are extremes, and the summer becomes very hot indeed. Most of the rain falls in a season of about four or six weeks. . . . . • DOMINION’S MANY BLESSINGS. “Your food is wonderful here in New Zealand. It is a privilege to be here and enjoy such fare for a change. Certainly we get pheasant for about two months of the year, but it becomes tiresome. Fowl is common, but it is, tasteless and not inviting to the palate. There is very little beef or pork, and no mutton. We never get cheese or butter, and there is only one cow in the whole district. It is . kept by,, foreigners, ■ who have to shelter it in a byre for six months. The grass is most unsuitable. There are only 1800 sheep in all Korea. “If you have never been out of New Zealand you cannot appreciate how really good your food is. We are : dependent largely on tinned meats and .tinned milk.” Orchards, however, did quita well. Peaches, apples and pears flourished in many parts of Korea, while some tropical fruit was obtainable from Fomjosa; It was when travelling’ home, -in'(the vicinity of Singapore, that Mr. - Grow ate his first meal of New Zealand meat and it was a rare treat, he ~declared. He could not speak authoritatively r - 'of the chances of commercial profit for New ■Zealand in the Far East, but thought that the inauguration of a direct steamer service from Wellington to Kobe would have imnroved matters.