A Dialectical Perspective of Korean Food Culture Through Korean Literature

Korean culinary culture is traditionally studied through the analysis of foods ingested. However, this study attempts to dialectically reinterpret Korean culinary culture through its relationship to Korean literature. In our study we consider culinary culture prior to the development of scientific techniques and economic growth related to food as "dietary lifestyle of the innocent world" and time since then as "the dietary lifestyle of the experience world". The former represents a simple means of survival without food processing (the "slow food" world), while the latter represents the "fast food" or processed food culture as a modern concept. People living in the age of economic growth and overflowing individualism have lacked an organic life and an opportunity to commune with nature. As a result, they have returned to values of the past, seeking the "slow food" culture to benefit their individual health. A series of return processes, however, were transformed into "the dietary life style of the higher innocence," called "a well-being dietary life style" involving a new healthy conception passing through the dietary life style of the experience world. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the dietary lifestyles of the "innocent" world and the "experience" world based on dialectic concepts. Individual concepts of "thesis" and "antithesis" are applied, as well as the developmental concept of "synthesis" for the way both symbolic worlds changed to "the dietary lifestyle of the higher innocence" and formed complementary relationships to each other.

한국 식생활 문화의 변증법적 관계 - 한국 문학작품을 중심으로 -