Many websites say that a typical Korean meal consists of rice, soup and side dishes. Why no main dishes?!
Answers: Some side dishes, e.g. japchae, can be a main dish as well. So, how is a dish considered a side dish or a main dish? Is it just that side dishes are smaller? Or, does it depend on the ingredients (with meat or not)?
It goes to a different style of eating.
The rice serves as the base of each bite. You can add a tiny bit of each side dish or just one tiny bit of a side dish to get the taste combination you want. Theoretically, you can get as many different tastes and textures as you want--a much more sophisticated experience than say, a breakfast meal of cereal and milk (one main dish).
The 'main dish,' if you want to call it that, is usually a soup or stew. Again, it's eaten a bit differently--alternating spoonfuls of stew with just plain bites of rice and side dishes.
This will make a lot more sense if you go to a Korean restaurant. Being observant, you'll probably note that the chopstick/spoon technique is quite different from say, the Chinese, who use the chopsticks to ferry rice into the mouth. Koreans will use chopsticks to pick the desired morsel of side dish, ferry it back to the spoon, and the spoon carries food to the mouth.
Only a few dishes like japchae can be both a meal and a side dish. Noodles in general are considered to be a main meal (but many noodle dishes are considered to be of foreign origin--Chinese--and are eaten differently). Japchae should be seen as an exception because it can be mixed with rice and still impart an interesting taste and good texture.
where did your get that from,they probably invented grilling over coals,
The idea of having a "main" thing at a meal is VERY Western...Think about it, why would you NOT want to have a small serving of a wide range of things instead? The idea of "meat and two veg" probably originated with the English, not known after all for their culinary finesse!
Trust me. You don't want those main dishes. Eat other Asian food.