Comments

  1. says

    That’s sad. Also, the suckers attach to your tongue! (according to someone in one of the other videos of people eating squirming tentacles). Then there was the fish that was chopped up for eating–but the head was still gasping. It’s cruelty to animals. People in some places will eat anything that moves. But if we’re going to eat them, they should be killed as quickly and painlessly as possible.

  2. says

    Hmmm… guess my inner carnivore is behind the curve, because there’s no way in hell I’d eat anything that was still squirming like that! Gross.

    Now fried calamari… yum!

  3. sobermikeinjapan says

    Yum!
    Then again, tackling fresh cephalopod is best done wearing gloves as this young lady learned to her regret:

  4. bergo says

    Ah, san nakji. That was my favorite dish to order when my parents came to visit me in Korea. I like it, although it doesn’t taste like much beyond what you dip it in. And yes, the suckers do attach to pretty much anything, including your tongue.

    It’s quite a test of your chopstick skills.

  5. J Daley says

    PZ – if you haven’t yet, you really need to watch Old Boy, a Korean film by Chan-Wook Park. Not only is it an awesome psycological thriller (in the spirit of Hitchcock, only better), but it’s got a great live-squid-eating scence. Whole live squid. Eeew.

    Plus the greatest one-guy-vs-thirty fight scene ever.

  6. says

    Happy omnivore here, some things I won’t eat. I love sushi. But wiggling? Well, I won’t knock it till I’ve tried it… twice.

    The animal cruelty line falls apart for one reason. Fish are butchered this way before they are neatly packaged, frozen, and shipped to your local grocer. You just don’t see it.

  7. Jick says

    Amazing. When I saw the video, I too thought of Old Boy, and then someone already mentioned it. Korea isn’t such a remote place these days…

    By the way, the “Animal Cruelty” part strikes me rather odd. They ARE killed. At least those on the dish seems pretty decently killed. If you think hacking an octopus into pieces with a sharp knife is not “as quick and painless as possible,” what would serve?

    (Or it could be a squid. The internet says “nakji” is a kind of a small octopus, but I’m not sure if it’s accurate…)

    I mean, It’s not our fault that their legs tend to squirm for minutes after they are severed!

    Well, actually some people love to eat a small octopus ALIVE, just dipped slightly to hot red pepper sauce. So, it’s really alive when it comes into your mouth, and you kill it by eating. Pretty decent and quick. (And if that counts for animal cruelty, then remember that many many animals eat their prey alive, including octopi, I think.)

    As for me, I don’t eat them unless they are well cooked. Don’t like aquatic invertebrates. I’d rather prefer a spicy bowl of dog.

    Well, if you have to talk about animal cruelty, then I may start about Ge-jang (fermented crabs), my wife’s favorite, but I think not many would appreciate it, so I’ll spare you those dark ugly culinary details, and leave you wondering. :)

    – Jick

  8. says

    Octopus are very intelligent creatures. They eat their prey live. I’m sure this doesn’t bother them because I doubt they have a hypocritical bone in their body.

  9. Jon H says

    Althought I know the octopus-fandom here, when I saw the video my first thought was “a plate of live leeches?”

  10. MJKelleher says

    Althought I know the octopus-fandom here, when I saw the video my first thought was “a plate of live leeches?”

    And mine was gagh.