The block to hang up outside for air drying is called 메주 (meju) which is form before made into 된장 (dwenjang). There is more process involved to make it into dwenjang. Actually from that meju we make daenjang and soy sauce.
It isn't alternative to photoshop though, what about darktable (https://www.darktable.org/)? I could be wrong but it is more of an alternative to lightroom afaik. Have you used?
The food called "black rice" in the blog is called sundae or soondae (순대) which in South Korea they put glass noodles and such instead of rice. So it is not North Korean specialty. If you the author haven't tried, you should definitely try from South Korean restaurants too and there are a different versions of food with sundae; steamed, in soup, stirfried in spicy sauce... etc.
Kanji is believed to be introduced by Korea, and Katakana is originated from Korean Buddhism monks' scripting system for representing grammatical particle of Korean language in Korean Silla kingdom period.
Please original writer, either don't say anything about history if you don't know actual history or do better research.