Manners: chopsticks and spoon simultaneously

Question

At 연세어학당, I learned a sentence with an implied subject, an object, a conjunction in the object, an adverb, and a verb. I will never forget it, because it was the first "big sentence" that I had learned in Korean, something more than just "어디 가세요" or "그것을 주세요". At any rate, it was important in my formation as a learner of the Korean language and thus Korean culture.

The point is, I have found that the sentence itself seems to be entirely untrue. Many people use their chopsticks to place hot ramen or other noodles onto a spoon to cool them off; to do this, they use their spoon in their left hand and their chopsticks in the right hand.

So I've been vexed by this for two decades because of that sentence in a textbook.

Is this particular manner outdated or not, or perhaps if the sentence were just for the use of textbook learning and not related to any true Korean custom or manner.

젓가락과 숟가락을 따로따로 써야합니다.

One must use the chopsticks and spoon separately.

Is this sentence a true representation of a Korean manner or custom, and if so, what is the background and current state of that manner in Korean culture?

Answer 1

Yes, the "proper" table manner is to use the spoon and chopsticks separately. However, when people eat ramen, they don't usually care about table manners, just like people don't look for forks and knives in McDonalds.

I think people generally don't mind table manners that much, unless you're meeting, say, your father-in-law. After all, whether someone uses spoon and chopsticks at the same time doesn't hurt anybody. It's much less important than, say, not letting your kid run around the restaurant. (Also, traditional Korean society had a very deep aversion to left-handedness, and mandated everyone to use their right hand for everything. Obviously that's a problem in the modern society.)

Also, if you go to fancy Chinese/Japanese restaurants they will probably give you a kind of "soup spoon" that's totally different from Korean style spoons. In that case I guess "Korean table manners" isn't really applicable.