Re-Defining National Cuisine : Dietary Practices of Multi-Cultural Families in South Korea

Abstract

This paper explores the patterns of inter-cultural adaptation and accommodation of dietary practices of multi-cultural families. Foreign women married to Korean men compromise in their daily diet between the desire to eat the food of their culture and the need to adapt it to the rest of the Korean familys expectations. This domain becomes the terrain of fusion of food habits and palates as the border-crossing of food and taste more or less freely practiced by the members of these families passes onto their children, thereby requiring new definitions of Korean national cuisine and what it means to be Korean. Based on ethnographic descriptions of the dietary life of multi-cultural families, the paper intends to analyze the meaning of these everyday life experiences in the context of the political and ideological discourses of multiculturalism in contemporary South Korea. It is argued in particular that food provides a meaningful space where the terms of mutual relationships, gender roles, and the concept of family are defined, negotiated, and communicated among the members of these families.