Hwalmyungsu

Hwalmyungsu is a herbal digestive sold by the single dose. It comes in a small brown glass bottle of 75 ml with a gold screw cap and a cream label bordered in a red key pattern, on which the name runs down in large red Korean letters beside the Chinese characters 活命水, "water that saves life", beneath a red folding fan. The liquid inside is dark brown. Its maker lists ten herbal ingredients, among them cinnamon, clove, gambir, corydalis tuber, dried citrus peel and magnolia bark, with l-menthol, and it is taken after meals for indigestion, a full stomach or nausea, one bottle to an adult dose.

Dong-wha's account is that Min Byeong-ho, an officer at the court of the Korean emperor Gojong, joined remedies used in the palace to Western medicine, and in 1897 founded Dong-wha Yakbang with his son Min Kang at Sunhwa-dong in Seoul to sell the result. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture records that the pharmacy made Hwalmyungsu from its beginning. Success brought some sixty imitations with names such as Hwalmyeong Hoesaengsu, and in 1910 the firm registered its fan mark, reported as the first trademark registered in Korea.

The bottle carries a political history too. Min Kang ran the Seoul liaison office of the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai from the pharmacy, and, by the company's account and the Chosun Ilbo's, money from the drink went to the independence movement. When Sohn Kee-chung won the Berlin Olympic marathon in 1936, Dong-wha's congratulatory advertisement urged readers towards sound stomachs and Hwalmyungsu.

In 1965 a rival, Gas Myungsu, added carbonation, and in 1967 Dong-wha answered with Gas Hwalmyungsu, which became the firm's main product. The still original was never dropped. It is sold today in Korean pharmacies in the same small bottle, "Since 1897" printed under the fan, while the sparkling version travels to Korean grocers abroad.