It is acknowledged that Korean climate is appropriate for doing rice farming. Since cultivating rice started between the fifth and sixth century B.C., it has been one of the most important business for making a living in Korea. Therefore, lots of reci...
It is acknowledged that Korean climate is appropriate for doing rice farming. Since cultivating rice started between the fifth and sixth century B.C., it has been one of the most important business for making a living in Korea. Therefore, lots of recipes for rice have been developed and spread as traditional food. However, Duk and Han-gwa, which are the most popular food of rice as snacks or desserts, recently have been taken place of by western cake.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the knowledge and tastes of the university students about Duk and Han-gwa and to analyze the difference between the knowledge of the students who major in cooking and that of the students who don't. The reason university students were chosen to be questioned among Korean young people is that they can put great influences on the contemporary food culture. Moreover, by the researches on actual consumption for Duk and Han-gwa of university students, this study points some problems of Duk and Han-gwa and shows the ways how Duk and Han-gwa could be popularized.
The subjects of this study were selected from the students with cooking-related majors, who have studied about Duk and Han-gwa at class, and those with non-cooking majors who haven't have that experience. The methods used in the analysis were frequency analysis, Chi-square test, independent sample t-test, one-way ANOVA, and correlation analysis.
The result is as follows :
First, the recognition of Duk and Han-gwa was generally low except for the items that could easily be seen as either seasonable foods or festive foods. There was a significant difference in the average score of recognition for each kind of Duk and Han-gwa dependent on the major, gender, and grade.
Second, there was a significant difference in the average score of preference for each kind of Duk dependent on the major, gender, and grade; for each kind of Han-gwa dependent on gender, and grade, but not on the major of the subject.
Third, as a result of examining the perceptions of Duk and Han-gwa, it was found that most of the students knew moderately or little about those foods. Meanwhile, more than half of the students liked Duk, and Han-gwa. The reason they liked them was that those foods satisfied Korean tastes, while the reason of dislike was that the students were more familiar with western-style confections than with those foods. They answered they ate Duk and Han-gwa only on the special occasions, such as big holidays, or the ceremonies for the dead ancestors. Mostly, they answered they bought those foods at the conventional markets, the mills in the neighborhood, or the big malls. The factor they considered the most important at the time of purchase was the quality (taste), which demonstrates that the development of Duk and Han-gwa with new tastes and shapes that satisfy the Korean's tastes, in maintaining the traditional taste, is an urgent question.
Fourth, for the questions asking about the problems faced by Duk/Han-gwa manufacturing industry and the reasons of low usage, the students responded that buying those food itself was difficult because they couldn't easily find the place selling them. The result seems to demonstrate the present condition that there is almost no specialty stores for Duk and Han-gwa unlike the bakeries scattered all over the country.
In conclusion, for the popularization and industrialization of Duk and Han-gwa, as well as their activation and quality-improvement, the following measures are proposed: developing the products with new tastes and shapes by diversifying the ingredients and the shapes; popularizing the specialty stores to help consumers find them easily, and; promoting sales by intensifying the marketing strategies to publicize the food products.