This podcast looks into the history of food and drink culture in Korea. It covers how globalization across Eurasia has developed the culture into what we see today, mainly for soju and distilled alcoholic beverages. Using research and our own experiences as Asian-Americans, we explore the significance of Korean food and drink culture to modern times as it has become popularized to the entire world.
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The goal of this project is to visually recreate the stories in the form of a comic strip from Jisoo Kim’s research in Chapter Five of her book the Emotions of Justice. Throughout this chapter, Kim includes stories of individuals who petitioned on behalf of their family members to highlight the way they shaped the Chosŏn legal system. Through the use of illustrations, I hope to provide the reader with a visual representation of these accounts that reflects the emotions and feelings of those challenging unjust treatment.
In Chosŏn Korea, legal practices were heavily influenced by wŏn, a term encompassing emotions like grief, hatred, anger, and suffering. The state believed that letting the wŏn of individuals fester would threaten social order and harmony. The legal system therefore became a means to relieve the wŏn of the people. Individuals of all social backgrounds (elite/commoner/slave) utilized the legal system through both verbal and written petitions to seek justice. While the idea of justice during the Chosŏn period was defined by the state, the people also played an important role in challenging that definition (Kim 12)
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During the Chosŏn Dynasty in Korea (1382-1897), women's roles were drastically redefined by Neo-Confucianism. Women were expected to "display chastity, obedience, and faithfulness," (Seth 79). These values restricted women's behavior to their husband's needs and wants. Additionally, women lost the ability to divorce, remarry or inherit property, rights they possessed previously in the Koryŏ dynasty, and were housed separately from men (in "inner" chambers) (Seth 106). But even during this extremely restrictive time, women were astonishingly able to develop a fruitful female literary culture. In fact, one could argue that Korean women were the ones who legitimized the Korean alphabet, now known as han'gul. The han'gul alphabet, first introduced in 1443, was called ŏnmun (vernacular script) or amgul (women's script), and was considered "vulgar" or inferior to the Chinese script because the latter was used in the government and by elite men, whereas han'gul had more widespread usage across social classes (Kim 46).
One of the first ways Korean women used han'gul was to keep track of their household duties. For example, cookbooks were popularized as among the first books written by women. According to Ro Sang-ho's article, "Cookbooks and Female Writers in Late Chosŏn Korea," the two female authors of Umsik timibang and Kyuhap ch'ongsŏ, both cookbooks written around 1670, transformed the act of cooking from an illiterate to a literate task (Ro 5). By doing so, they encouraged literacy and education among Korean women. However, women used han'gul for more than just cookbooks: they also documented dress sizing and kept track of religious dates (Cho 14). Each of these household uses of han'gul encouraged a more literate female population.
During the previous Koryŏ dynasty, most Korean women were illiterate (Seth 128). However, the availability of cookbooks and the use of writing for household management showed that female literacy was increasing. Women learning to read and write were only taught han'gul because it was much easier to learn to read and write than the classical Chinese taught to the scholar-elite, who were all men (Kim 55). Elite women were especially well-versed in han'gul because they used reading and writing for their household duties. In fact, even before the advent of han'gul, elite women that were literate read Confucian texts in order to learn their filial duties first-hand. Additionally, women in court were expected to write greeting letters, keep household registries, and copy books for the libraries (Cho 13). Interestingly, another great encouraging force for many women to read came through the spread of the Christian religion in the nineteenth century. The "Bible Women," called kwŏnsŏ puin, encouraged multitudes of Korean women to learn han'gul in order to be able to read the Christian Bible for themselves in an effort to convert them (Cho 34).
Because women could now read and write, they also inserted themselves into the legal system of petitions by expressing their wŏn in writing (Kim 6). Expressions of wŏn (suffering) were an important component of any legal case, and because women could now write in han'gul, they also used it when submitting petitions---impressive considering petitions in han'gul were initially not allowed. By inserting han'gul into the legal system, women legitimized it in the eyes of the Korean government and society (Kim 20). In some instances, women would even ask scribes to submit a petition in Chinese script and submit another themselves in han'gul to increase their chances of a favorable verdict. Ultimately, by using han'gul, Korean women altered the existing legal and literary space, elevating the prestige of the han'gul script.
In addition to using han'gul for household duties and legal petitions, some women also wrote for pleasure. Women wrote many letters during this period. Women who wrote could communicate with those outside of their immediate family, a privilege that not everyone enjoyed (Cho 16). One major change elite and other women made to letter writing was completely changing the spatial landscape thereof by introducing spiral letters, a phenomenal contribution that their husbands later copied (Cho 21). Although women generally had their mobility restricted, letter writing provided literate women with a wider range of social interactions (Cho 11).
Women also wrote poems and novels, and were likely the main consumers of novels as well. The most popular kind of poem women composed in han'gul was the sijo, which was adopted both by the elite and women of lower social status (Cho 10). In these poems women often expressed their true feelings of loneliness about living in the inner chambers or the sadness of love (Seth 104). Women liberated both themselves and their script through art forms like letter writing, and the composition of novels and poems.
Korean women during the Chosŏn period legitimized the Korean vernacular script, han'gul. They were so successful in this endeavor that han'gul is still used in North and South Korea today as the official script. In North Korea it is even called "Chosŏn muntcha." The women legitimized the script through its use in cookbooks and household writing, inserted the script into the legal system through petitions, and employed it in art forms such as letter writing, novels, and poems. The use of han'gul provided women with a separate, female outlet. Women began to prioritize their education, increasing literacy rates, and could now access an all-female audience that related to their feelings of loneliness at home.
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The purpose of this piece is to highlight the impact that Korean Kinship novels had on Korean history. As described in Ksenia Chizhova’s book Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea “Lineage novels are vernacular Korean texts transcribed by elite women and circulated through kinship networks.” (Chizhova 21) However, these novels were more than just written documents. To simply call them texts downplays their influence, which often spanned across multiple generations in a family. These novels were also significant for capturing “ the structures of feelings that embedded the ritual, economic, and moral imperative of Chosŏn kinship in a life world, a space for living”. Unlike texts by upper-class male Koreans who, due to their classical Chinese education, preferred using hanja (Chinese characters), these novels on the other hand solely used hangul, or vernacular Korean. Despite hangul’s creation in the 15th century, the continued usage of hanja by upper-class male Koreans created a class and gender divide between the people of the Chosŏn era. In the end, these novels are an example of how this left “women’s literacy and cultural activities relied heavily on Korean scriptural practices”. (Chizhova 31). The aim of the creation of this art piece is to highlight this unique gender divide in the literary creation Chosŏn era.
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I created a comic strip on the history of soju because this topic had truly piqued my interest. The comic strip highlights information drawn from the book Soju: A Global History (Cambridge University Press, 2021) by Hyunhee Park. While it was definitely a challenge to condense the vast amount of information in the book, I aimed to convey the main takeaways. One of the key takeaways is how soju served as an example of food culture and broader global cultural exchange. The development of soju in Korea suggests an interactive relationship between technology and culture–that technology drives cultural change and vice versa.
As someone who was never interested in alcohol or its history, I genuinely enjoyed learning many new and fascinating facts about soju’s history through reading Park’s book. I was particularly amazed at how alcohol could play a significant role in human lives and cultures, and the complex histories behind its transfer. While soju is considered one of the most popular drinks today, not many people are aware of its history because of how difficult it is to access information about it outside of academic research, which can be at first overwhelming or challenging to understand. My intention, therefore, is to share valuable insight into the history of soju in a less formal way through my comic strip. After completing this project, I feel that I’ve taken a big step toward embracing my Korean heritage by delving into its rich history.
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I created a three-dimensional pop-up artwork that illustrates the importance of women in late Chosŏn period (1600s–1800s) literature and writing. I was inspired by Ksenia Chizhova’s monograph, The Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea (Columbia University Press, 2021), to show that writing in the Korean Peninsula were not always in Classical Chinese, nor were they written solely by elite males.
Today, the writing system used in Korea is hangul, or the Korean alphabet. It was created in 1443, but throughout the Chosŏn dynasty, classical Chinese was used by the yangban elite and royalty because of the close relationship to the Ming Dynasty, cultural affinity with previous Chinese dynasties, and Confucian ideals. The Korean alphabet, on the other hand, was used primarily for communication with the general public as well as among yangban women.
Among the literature written in Korean alphabet are the stories written by elite women discussed in The Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea. They first appear in the late 17th century. Although written in the later Chosŏn period, the stories are set far off in ancient China. Although remote in the past, this setting provided the inspiration for the Chosŏn’s imagination of an ideal society. The value system of Chosŏn Korea was based on the respect of others, especially one’s social superiors, as well as morality surrounding relationships between ruler and servant, father and child, and wife and husband based on the teachings of Confucius. Kinship also played a huge role as it laid out the rules for how to behave and act with others depending on their family relationships. The lineage novels discussed in this book often revolve around these scenarios. Their authors used the stories to showcase the formulation of Chosŏn’s moral rules and how the social hierarchy is important for everyone to understand and follow.
Portrayed in my creation is a 3D pop-up art that is composed of a crocheted yangban woman, a hand-bound book, created in the likeness of a traditional Korean book, filled with my take on Korean vernacular calligraphy, and pop up art that showcases the story of a particular kinship novel, “Brothers Hyon." The story is about how two brothers deal with their ideas of love, lust, and control. The crocheted female doll is a symbol for how in this society, females were subservient to their fathers, husbands, and sons, and were tasked with doing household chores. Thus the crochet, while not being a part of Chosŏn culture, represents women’s role in the society as housebound individuals. The book is handmade with vernacular Korean writing, signifying the stories the yangban women would write, while the pop-up pages are a summary of the story I chose to write in the book. Together, the art I made celebrates the talent and the ability of women. Although society placed them in a specific role, they still found ways to be creative and engage their curiosity.
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Although alcohol was not typically sold this way before the modern period, this piece is meant to emphasize how versatile alcoholic beverages were throughout Korea’s history. By the Late Koryŏ period (1250s–1392s) there were over 25 varieties of liquor, rice being the most popular (75). The lettering of the word soju in the artwork is written in Korean letters. This artistic choice has many implications. While the Mongol period influence on alcoholic beverages in the East Asia peninsula was immense, soju eventually became a Korean product produced with techniques developed in Korea and made from resources in Korea. Moreover, in premodern Korea, Korean lettering, now known as hangul, occupied an informal written space and was reserved for household use (as opposed to Chinese lettering, which was more formal). Therefore this artistic choice alludes to the production of alcohol in households.
Historical Context:
The artwork was inspired by Hyunhee Park’s book, Soju: A Global History (Cambridge, 2021), which uses soju’s development through history to understand the first stages of globalization in world history. During the thirteenth and fourteenth century, the Mongols conquered Korea and China, spreading their dietary customs. Among one of these was the consumption of new varieties of alcoholic drinks. One of the first alcoholic beverages introduced by the Mongols was called, “kumiss” or “shobat,” made from the fermented milk of mare and camel, and contained low alcohol content, less than 10% (43). Soon after, they introduced imported liquors made of grapes. As new alcoholic drinks were introduced into the Eastern Asia peninsula, Korea also adopted new distillation methods that could create drinks with stronger alcohol content (47). They made their own versions of this stronger alcohol made of grains.
Before the introduction of distillation, the most popular drink in Korea was rice wine. As described on p.70, Korean rice wine (which is different from soju) was “milky, off white, slightly sweet, tangy, bitter, astringent taste.” After distillation practices were introduced, Koreans began to make, aralgil (the word is derived through Mongolian and Turkish the Arabic word arak, meaning “perspiration” 80), a distilled liquor made by portable stills. As a result, the new alcohol lasted longer and was more concentrated at 40% or higher alcohol content.
Koreans adopted these new technological advances. Korean stills are called “soju kori” and in the Chosŏn period, many families typically owned a still. Alcohol was used for medicine, spiritual and other social practices. As its popularity grew, drinking became more frequent, some even attended several drinking parties in one day (76). In conclusion, changes in the uses of alcohol and the evolution of techniques for making alcohol give us an understanding of the relationships that pre-modern Korea had with its neighbors as well as how soju became what it is today, Korea’s National Drink.
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