There is a saying that in the 1970s, a grandfather took his grandson to a public bathhouse. As the grandfather stepped into the hot tub, he said, "Ah, siwonhada (how refreshing)." The grandson quickly followed him into the tub, only to cry, "Ouch, it's hot," and declare, "There's not a single person you can trust." What foreigners who love K-food find hardest to understand is when Koreans say "siwonhada (refreshing)" while eating hot soup or stew.
According to Korean linguists, the word "siwonhada" has been used since before the 15th century not as a term about temperature sensation, but to express a sense of refreshment and pleasant feeling. It reportedly began appearing in combination with words expressing the taste of food only at the end of the 19th century. The "Great Dictionary of the Korean Language (1992)" defines "siwonhada" in several ways: "moderately cool," "content and light-hearted after a stifled feeling is relieved," "relieved in mind after pain or a stifling feeling disappears," "cheerful and giving a pleasant impression in one's words or actions," "easygoing and lively," and "a food's broth being clean and light rather than heavy." Its connection to the temperature concepts of hot and cold is slight. In summary, "siwonhada" is used in spatial, liquid, gaseous, energy (gi, 氣), emotional, and behavioral senses. It is siwonhada when moving from a narrow place to an open one and the space or view becomes clear and unobstructed; siwonhada when broth or a beverage tastes clean, crisp, and delicious; siwonhada when breathing in fresh air in the morning (refreshing); siwonhada when the body feels clean and energy flows through it; siwonhada when a stifled heart is opened and relieved, or when a bad person is punished by a third party (gratifying); and siwonhada when someone's words are clear or their actions are pleasant. It is used in these many ways.
From every linguistic angle, "siwonhada" holds a meaning beyond the temperature sensation of "cold." The phrase "the haejang-guk (hangover soup) is siwonhada" does not mean the soup is cold, but that eating the hot soup left one's stomach feeling relieved—an expression of taste. By the same example, we typically describe singgeonji (dongchimi, watery radish kimchi) or kimchi broth, which is high in acid from lactic acid fermentation, as "siwonhan kimchi broth," and we also call a clean, well-salted pollack soup "siwonhan pollack soup." Since none of these are cold foods, we can see that here the word siwonhada is used not as a temperature-sensation term but to express a refreshing feeling related to digestion. Among foods, especially in combination with "liquids" such as water and soup, the expression "siwonhada" has been used mainly to mean "satisfying (by quenching thirst)." When Koreans wanted to say that a food's temperature was low in the temperature sense, they used expressions like "it has cooled" or "it is cold."
In other words, the etymological meaning of "siwonhada" is not "cold or moderately cool," the temperature-based opposite of "hot," but rather "content and relieved after a stifled feeling is released." The expression "siwonhada" is also used when one breathes in cool, refreshing air and feels vitality and good spirits in the body, and when, upon entering a hot bath, one's energy (gi) momentarily revives and the body feels clean and pleasant. It is likewise used to express a kind of cathartic emotion after watching a novel, film, or play.
Generations or people who do not know this history of language development perceive "siwonhada" simply as meaning "cold." That is why they find it strange when someone says "siwonhada" while eating hot soup. Foreigners with limited language comprehension in particular often harbor such doubts. Eventually, even Koreans make puzzled expressions, unable to understand why one would say siwonhada while eating hot soup. As this happens repeatedly, the meaning of siwonhada has instead come to be perceived, wrongly, as the opposite of "hot," meaning "low in temperature," and has grown ever more distorted. Even some linguists, without scientifically understanding the taste-related meaning of "siwonhada," go so far as to interpret it from the perspective of a contronymic polyseme (multi-meaning language) that simultaneously expresses the opposing concepts of "cold" and "hot." Of course, this too arises from trying to interpret an old Korean word by wrongly reading it solely as "cold." From the standpoint of food studies, the opposite of "siwonhada" in food is not "warm" or "hot," but rather closer to "heavy" or "greasy."
This phenomenon is an error that arose after Liberation when Korean words that do not exist in English were needlessly and wrongly translated into English. Although the original meaning of the siwonhan taste contains no sense of "cold" related to temperature sensation, translating it as "cool"—a temperature concept—caused the Korean word "siwonhada" to be understood as the temperature concept of "cold," and this spread widely and wrongly. Moreover, since "maepda (spicy)" is translated as "hot," a temperature concept, "cool," the translated word for "siwonhada," easily and unquestioningly became corrupted or damaged into a temperature concept.
This phenomenon, which also appears when translating the names of Korean foods into English or Chinese characters, is ultimately a distortion of the Korean language. That is why, when translating "siwonhada," which expresses a Korean taste, it is more correct to use the Korean word itself, "siwonhada," rather than "cool."
