This book examines the historical development of Korean food TV and its articulation of Koreanness in the era of globalization. Jaehyeon Jeong defines the evolution of Korean food TV as an outcome of the conjuncture between the television industry's structural changes, the shift in food's landscape and cultural legitimacy, and various sociocultural, political, and economic transformations. In addition, Jeong reveals how the state appropriates the banality of food to raise South Korea's global image and how it utilizes domestic television to disseminate statist discourse of the nation. Understanding discourses of national cuisine as reflective of and formative of discourses of the nation, he argues that the growth of discourses of national cuisine is symptomatic of the struggle for nationness in a globalized world.
Jaehyeon Jeong teaches in the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University.
Chapter 1 The History of Korean Food TV and Its Social Situatedness Chapter 2 The Explosion of Food TV Chapter 3 Government, Food Industry, and Television Production Chapter 4 The Struggle for Nationness in the Era of Globalization
This book breaks new ground by analyzing the semantic and ideological roles of food television within a context of nationalism. Uniquely connecting Korean food, media, and socio-cultural identities, it aptly presents innovative and distinctive interpretations of the politics of food. Jeong prepares the readers to better comprehend the growing popularity of food media that surrounds them on a daily basis. His rich and empirical approaches provide new insights on the interplay of Korean food, media, and culture, which has rapidly become part of global scenes in the early 21st century.--Dal Yong Jin, Professor, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University This is without a doubt, one of the best contributions to the scholarship on Korean cuisine I have had a chance to read so far. The narrative is very well situated in the country's shifting socio-economic context, and the richness of empirical data is astonishing. The rise of food as a major component of televised entertainment is merely an entry point for exploring manifold developments that are critical for our understanding of contemporary Korean society. Jaehyeon Jeong tells a story that will be of interest to an audience far broader than scholars of food or television.--Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, Leiden University
