Do I eat rice with the spoon or the chopsticks?

Short answer

The spoon. It is the one thing Seoul’s etiquette guide says outright about which tool does what. Two rules come with it — do not leave either utensil standing upright in the rice, and do not start before the eldest person at the table has. Fingers stay off the food, with one exception worth knowing.

Rice takes the spoon

A Korean place setting puts a spoon and a pair of chopsticks down together, and the guide is explicit about the division: rice is eaten with the spoon. The pair is used as a pair — the spoon is not there only for soup.

At the end of the meal both go back to the position they started in. It is a small closing gesture, and it is the guide’s own instruction rather than a regional flourish.

Upright in the rice is the one to avoid

Neither the spoon nor the chopsticks should be left standing up out of a bowl of rice.

This one deserves more attention than the rest of the list, because it is not a mistake of ignorance. It is what an absent hand does when the bowl is right there and the utensil needs somewhere to go.

The eldest person starts

Begin eating once the eldest at the table has begun. It is the same principle that orders seating and pouring across the region, applied to the first bite.

In practice this is a short pause after the food lands, not a ceremony. Watching for it once is usually enough to get the timing right for the rest of the meal.

The exception for fingers

Food is not touched with the hands — except when you are wrapping it. Lettuce and cabbage wraps are assembled in the palm, and that is the exception the guide carves out by name.

It is worth knowing at a grill table, where the wrap is most of the meal. This is the one point in a Korean meal where the utensils are the wrong tool.