A Korean Mother’s Cooking Notes: Maintaining South Korean Cooking and Ideals of Housewives in Glocal Influences

Abstract

This article examines A Korean Mother’s Cooking Notes and analyzes the role of cookbooks in understanding the changes in South Korean cooking and the lives of South Korean women in the 1990s. Using a framework of glocalization, I examine the ways in which the cookbook redefines the components and meanings of traditional Korean cooking. I argue that this cookbook specifically portrays the anxiety and desire of South Korean housewives in preserving home cooking and values while adapting to foreign influences. The cookbook also redefines the traditional ways in which mothers-in-law educated their daughters-in-law through translating oral cooking instructions into written and mediated pedagogy.