It was at dinner on the second night of my Korean adventure to drive the
2009 Hyundai Genesis on behalf of
Popular Mechanics when I finally decided to try kimchi. If you've never tried the stuff, you'd better have a stomach built like a steel-clad clay pot. I don't. But after spending a few hours running the first luxury sedan from the Korean automaker through its paces at their proving grounds outside of Seoul I figured it was the right time to finally introduce the uniquely Korean delicacy — a pungent, brine-fermented mixture of cabbage, garlic and chili pepper — to my delicate corn-fed Midwestern stomach. The moment the smell hit my nose I had flashbacks to laying on the floor of a wrestling mat in 6th grade with my coach cracking open smelling salts to rouse me. For a brief moment I thought that
maybe this was a bad idea. But it was the moment it actually hit my mouth that I
knew it was a bad idea. My eyes began to water, my mouth filled with fire and as I forced it down my throat I could already feel it burrowing its way toward my colon like a Northern soldier tunneling to Seoul. Later on that stomach-twisting night — spent alternately clutching the side of the hotel toilet bowl or my bed's sweat-soaked sheets — I had a lot of time to think about the day. Maybe it was some sort of as-yet-unknown hallucinogenic properties of the kimchi, or more likely it was the lack of sleep, but for whatever reason, I started to wonder what this fiery side dish as old as Korea could teach me about the
2009 Hyundai Genesis sedan.
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