BTS, Heung-min Son, and Joon-ho Bong have a similarity. It is that they led the Korean wave in their field. However, there is a appliance that led the Korean wave in cooking machines. Rice is completely indispensable for Korean meals and 'Electric pressure rice cooker' makes the rice delicious. In today's IP encyclopedia, let's take a look at the history of Korean rice cookers and its patents for electric pressure cookers.

Rice cooker culture in Korea has a very long history where rice is the staple food. Due to the hardness of rice, it needs a high temperature and pressure to cook and eat. Especially, in order to increase pressure, a pressure above atmospheric pressure is needed, and the pressure on the above must be increased. Rice cookers applying these principles have been existed in Korea from early on. The origin could be found in the word 'Rice cooker'. It is 'Cauldron', which is the pot that makes grain into rice.

On the Korean peninsula, cauldrons, which are made of copper, are old enough to be found at the remains of Gojoseon. Due to the geographic feature of Korea, where there are many paddy fields, our ancestors would have tried to use this abundant resource of rice. In this reason, an appliance to cook the rice was also developed.

The lid of cauldron is heavy enough to take up a third of the total weight. If the lid is heavy, the pressure from the top rises, the temperature changes gradually when making rice, and the escape of water vapor escapes goes lower. In this case, the boiling point of water rises and the rice is cooked above 100 degrees, so the rice becomes evenly and the taste of rice gets improved.

The cauldron was used by burning wood in the furnace until the Joseon Dynasty, but in the modern society, The form of the pot also changed naturally as a gas stove was used in household. Instead of a heavy cauldron, a pressure cooker made of light materials for gas stoves appeared.

The pressure cooker for the gas cooker brought the same principle of the cauldron. It is not as much as a cauldron, however, it is made of a heavy lid and a durable body. When you connect the lid with the main body and turn the handle, the internal space can be sealed by the gear wheels engaging each other. When you heat it with a gas fire, the water vapor occurs as water boils inside. Since it is sealed, the water vapor that are stacked inside, can cause higher pressure and could be exploded, however, there is a steam outlet arranged in the lid. The outlet is blocked by heavy pressure pendulum, and when the pressure becomes a certain level, the weight is pushed out and the steam is discharged gradually. Afterwards, when the rice steam thoroughly, the sticky rice is completed.

In fact, the pressure cooker was imported from France at first. French physicist and inventor Denis Papin introduced the 'Steam steamer' in 1679, and in 1948, it was sold in a modern form by a French home supplies company, which became a sensational popularity in Europe. In Korea, in the late 1970s, pressure cookers made from 'Saekang Aluminum' widely went in to circulated.

Like a common used sentence, " You have to marry someone who makes good rice", making rice with pressure cooker was a kind of dish that need a great attention in cooking. However, since times changed and busy modern people became insufficient of time to make rice in the morning, electric rice cooker appeared for alternative. It was innovative technology that makes rice automatically without having to measure the time or adjust the temperature respectively, but only thing to do was pressing the 'Cooking' button. It was widely spread with the thermal insulation function added to the early models that were only available for cooking.

Like the pressure cooker, the electric rice cooker was also imported from abroad. It was invented in Japan in 1921 and the popularity of electric rice cookers became so popular in Korea that it became Zojirushi's 'Elephant rice cooker' as an essential souvenir for Japanese tourism. The electric rice cooker had a great advantage of convenience, but it still had drawback that it tasted less than using a pressure cooker for gas stoves.

One day in 2006, an appliance that took only the advantages of a pressure rice cooker and an electric rice cooker was released in Korea, which is the first electric pressure cooker patent in Korea (KR100747630B1). The developer is a rice cooker company that is very familiar to us just by its name.

In the late 1990s, most of the electric pressure cookers were 'Hot plate heating' rice cookers that heated only the bottom of the inner pot. There was a problem that when making a large amount at once, it was cooked differently for each layer since it was heated slowly. Usually, the bottom part was often burnt or became scorched rice. In order to improve this problem of early electric pressure cookers, IH (IH: Induction Heating) method was introduced, incorporating the modern science.

In this method, so called 'Full heating', a copper coil is wrapped around the inside of the rice cooker. Therefore, when the electric current flows through the rice cooker, the magnetic filed changes and countless induced currents flow. This current meets the inner pot with high electrical resistance and is transformed into hot heat energy. It is the same principle as induction that we are using a lot these days. 'Full heating' type delivered the heat all over inside the pot. Therefore, the whole pot becomes hot and the rice is perfectly cooked.

The korean electric pressure cooker with the ability to make the highest quality rice has gained great popularity from neighboring countries that use rice as a principle food. From mid-2010, Korean companies make a move to target the Chinese market. so strategies based on adding major convenience functions, voice support, and localization including high-quality rice taste were very profitable. At that time, the appliance that chinese tourists who traveled to Korea must buy when they go back to their homeland was an electric pressure cooker.

In these days, Korean electric pressure cooker has become Jack of all trades that it is able to cook not only rice but also passable cooking. Including glossy and sticky rice, steamed dishes, soup, grilled eggs, rice cakes, boiled pork, and even risotto, you can cook them with different pressures and times by changing the settings. This Jack of all trades include the meaning that it is possible to enter any country that use rice as the principle food. Following the Korean wave, far away from Russia, there are seekers who are searching for Korean electric pressure cooker companies.

Korea was a country where rice was cooked before the three kingdoms period, but some pressure cookers and electric rice cookers were imported from France and Japan. However, now, the Korean electric pressure cookers have become part of the Korean wave and getting attention from all over the world. We are highly expecting that it will raise the original function of the rice cooker to the best and become a global cooker that can cook anything beyond rice.