The Korean National Folk Museum is holding
an exhibition on the history of the Korean kitchen:
"Kwon started cooking for a family of five on her husband’s side when she got married to him at 17. The mother-in-law, she said, was never present in the kitchen.
'It was solely my responsibility to cook and feed everyone, from the crack of dawn to sunset,' she said.
The case was not too different for 74-year-old Choi Young-ja, who got married at the age of 23 in Yeongdeok County, North Gyeongsang. Following the traditions, she went to live with her husband and his extended family.
From day one of their marriage, she had 10 mouths to feed.
'There was no running faucet at the time, so you had to go to a well nearby and get the water early in the morning to cook breakfast,' Choi told the museum. 'After they’re done eating and you’ve done the dishes, it’s time to cook lunch already. So you get busy in the kitchen again. Then after lunch, it’s again time to cook for dinner. Women couldn’t escape the kitchen.'
'Sometimes it got so hard that I thought I was going to die from all the work,' she said. 'I wanted to run from everything. But what can you do, that was life for most of us back then.'”
As in Western kitchens, the great paradox was that as brutal as kitchen work was, it was also a space of some privacy and autonomy for over-worked women.
No comments:
Post a Comment