Forget the sand, bring on the grease-busting Trio

Trio

Housewives used lye, rice water or sand for washing dishes in the 1960s. They even had to go through the trouble of boiling the dishes in iron pots to get rid of the grease.

But their job was made a lot easier after Chae Mong-in, founder of Aekyung Group, decided get into the dish soap manufacturing business.

Aekyung had already made a name for producing the little bars of soap found in public washrooms.

As part of the research stage, Chang Young-shin, wife of the founder and current chairman of Aekyung, helped translate product information about dish soap from overseas. She majored in chemistry at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The translation helped Chae understand the complex chemistry of the detergent.

After a great deal of trial and error, Korea’s Trio was launched in December 1966.

The product got its name from the fact it could wash fruit, vegetables as well as dishes. In fact, customers thought the soap was mainly for cleaning food materials to get rid of parasites. Rumors persisted that Trio had the approval of the parasite extermination association.

But users quickly found Trio was also good at cleaning up plates covered in grease. People started to give the soap to newlyweds as a wedding gift.

Over the years the soap took on different shapes and colors. Soon, similar products started to appear on the market. In the late 1980s the comedian Lee Joo-il washed his hair with soap in a television commercial.

The joke was that the instructions said the soap wasn’t harmful to the body.

“Every time we renewed the product we tried to make it so that there were more bubbles compared to other products from overseas,” said Cho In-shik, a research and production executive at Aekyung.

Consumers in Korea prefer lots of bubbles and grease-free plates, apparently.

Aekyung also took into account suggestions from the company’s cosmetic department, adding lemon, aloe and green tea.

Today Aekyung’s uses the same brand name but the soap is a completely different product to the original.

The earlier products only cleaned up the grease but today’s Trio is much more environmentally friendly and the soap powder is kinder to hands.

By Choi Ji-young [ojlee82@joongang.co.kr]