Snacks Making Me Think About Culture

I'm sitting here in the office at school, and one of the secretaries bought in some snacks for the teachers. This is a very common practice. Lately, the snacks have consisted of watermelon, or oriental melons. This is great, since watermelons cost about $17 here. Today, the snack was steamed white potatoes. This is also very common. More common is a big bowl of steamed sweet potatoes, which are much more yellow than the orange U.S. variety. This has started to make me think about food here in Korea.

Korean cuisine is very simple and hearty. Lots of soups full of vegetables, lots of pork dishes, and lots of spicy stuff. Everything contains red pepper paste (gochujjang) so everything has a kind of red "DANGER" look about it. But, that is not what was making me think here.

There is no distinction in Korea between foods. Let me clarify. If the U.S. we have food that is traditionally breakfast food, i.e. bacon, eggs, cereals, pancakes, oatmeal. I mean, people eat these things at all times, but usually they are found only at breakfast. This is not the case in Korea. They use the same dishes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Breakfast here is often rice and kim-chi chiggae (spicy kim-chi soup with tofu). There is nothing in the cuisine that is considered "a breakfast food." They do not have labels like this. There are some traditional foods that are for specific holidays. Ddeok-guk, rice cake soup, is a traditional New Years dish, but it is also served everyday.

I wonder where this "all food for every meal" thing came from. I'm sure that it has to do with the fact that Korea for many years has known real hunger. When people are struggling to survive, you don't exclude food because it's just breakfast food. It's interesting to wonder about.
More interesting though, would be why we have separate breakfast foods in the West. Anyone have any ideas?