By Kim Ji-myung
Hanging in the kitchen of my countryside home is a plate that reads: "Danger! Men Cooking." The phrase serves as a handy test question for visitors. A six-year kid laughed reading it, while her father stood dumbfounded, not knowing what was happening.
Most elderly male guests are simply puzzled. It is not a question of the English language but of culture. For most Korean men over 50 years, the words "men" and "cooking" are not associated. They are not related nor do they appear together. Kitchens and other spaces for housework are the domain of women. The connotation of cooking is that of serving the family by feeding them, which is far from the culinary art of creating happy and tasteful foods.
There is a widely known, albeit joking, Korean saying: "If a man enters kitchen, his banana will become crooked!" or in some areas, "it will even drop to the ground!" If this saying were true, then these days there would be many men in their 20s and 30s who must have become eunuchs by now!
But this is no longer a typical Korean family scene. According to the "Korea One-person Households Report 2019" from KB Bank, the proportion of single-family households has already exceeded 30 percent in South Korea's nine autonomous cities including Seoul. The proportion of single men and women households is almost equal. Part of the reason is a surge in the population of unmarried men. An estimated 11 percent of Korean men remained unmarried in 2015, similar to that of Japan 15 to 20 years ago.
As Koreans now enjoy a standard of living among the world's highest, there has emerged the issue of managing living alone. OECD health statistics show that the average life expectancy for Koreans in 2017 was 82.7 years, two years longer than the OECD average of 80.7 years.
If the wives of these elderly men live longer in good health and continue to cook for their husbands, it could be a happy story. But I find that an increasing number of men around me suddenly stop their social contact and disappear from meetings. Later it was found that the husbands had to take care of their wives who were suffering from Alzheimer's.
As a result of the culture of "no men in the kitchen," when a husband is suddenly left alone either by divorce or by a wife's death, he finds himself totally disabled. It is interesting that both Korean and Japanese husbands and sons share similar patterns in their management of living, while in the Chinese culture men seem to dominate the world of cooking.
I notice that society as well as the elderly themselves is awakening to this problem and trying to find solutions. The best is to let them cook and care for themselves.
Already in 1990, Japanese author Keizo Sahashi told the story of training her widowed, elderly father. He finally stood proudly in the kitchen wearing an apron which according to the Korean translation said "Grandpa's Kitchen."
In 2018, author Teruo Nishida, a Castroviejo Medal-winning ophthalmologist in Japan, published his book whose Korean title translates to "Now I Am Alone but Will Try to Live Well." Faced with his wife's sudden death at the age of 70, he encounters chores that he has never done his entire life. He began to quietly record how to live alone, hoping to be of comfort and help for others.
A desirable movement in Korea worth mentioning is the voluntary zeal to learn cooking among men, both in middle-aged and retired groups. Long before food and cooking programs dominated TV networks, there were silent, high-end cooking classes for small groups in operation.
Some active professionals such as lawyers, designers, and writers enjoyed encounters among themselves and cooking classes. More recently, there are colleges running cooking courses for a full semester for retired men. So far, they are very popular and successful, sometimes inviting the wives of grandpa students.
In this way, Koreans seem to be adapting slowly to the rise of single-person households. However, it will be important to continue to empower grandpas to be comfortable in the kitchen so they can take care of themselves regardless of what life brings their way.
The writer (Heritagekorea21@gmail.com) is the chairperson of the Korea Heritage Education Institute (K*Heritage).
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Most elderly male guests are simply puzzled. It is not a question of the English language but of culture. For most Korean men over 50 years, the words "men" and "cooking" are not associated. They are not related nor do they appear together. Kitchens and other spaces for housework are the domain of women. The connotation of cooking is that of serving the family by feeding them, which is far from the culinary art of creating happy and tasteful foods.
There is a widely known, albeit joking, Korean saying: "If a man enters kitchen, his banana will become crooked!" or in some areas, "it will even drop to the ground!" If this saying were true, then these days there would be many men in their 20s and 30s who must have become eunuchs by now!
But this is no longer a typical Korean family scene. According to the "Korea One-person Households Report 2019" from KB Bank, the proportion of single-family households has already exceeded 30 percent in South Korea's nine autonomous cities including Seoul. The proportion of single men and women households is almost equal. Part of the reason is a surge in the population of unmarried men. An estimated 11 percent of Korean men remained unmarried in 2015, similar to that of Japan 15 to 20 years ago.
As Koreans now enjoy a standard of living among the world's highest, there has emerged the issue of managing living alone. OECD health statistics show that the average life expectancy for Koreans in 2017 was 82.7 years, two years longer than the OECD average of 80.7 years.
If the wives of these elderly men live longer in good health and continue to cook for their husbands, it could be a happy story. But I find that an increasing number of men around me suddenly stop their social contact and disappear from meetings. Later it was found that the husbands had to take care of their wives who were suffering from Alzheimer's.
As a result of the culture of "no men in the kitchen," when a husband is suddenly left alone either by divorce or by a wife's death, he finds himself totally disabled. It is interesting that both Korean and Japanese husbands and sons share similar patterns in their management of living, while in the Chinese culture men seem to dominate the world of cooking.
I notice that society as well as the elderly themselves is awakening to this problem and trying to find solutions. The best is to let them cook and care for themselves.
Already in 1990, Japanese author Keizo Sahashi told the story of training her widowed, elderly father. He finally stood proudly in the kitchen wearing an apron which according to the Korean translation said "Grandpa's Kitchen."
In 2018, author Teruo Nishida, a Castroviejo Medal-winning ophthalmologist in Japan, published his book whose Korean title translates to "Now I Am Alone but Will Try to Live Well." Faced with his wife's sudden death at the age of 70, he encounters chores that he has never done his entire life. He began to quietly record how to live alone, hoping to be of comfort and help for others.
A desirable movement in Korea worth mentioning is the voluntary zeal to learn cooking among men, both in middle-aged and retired groups. Long before food and cooking programs dominated TV networks, there were silent, high-end cooking classes for small groups in operation.
Some active professionals such as lawyers, designers, and writers enjoyed encounters among themselves and cooking classes. More recently, there are colleges running cooking courses for a full semester for retired men. So far, they are very popular and successful, sometimes inviting the wives of grandpa students.
In this way, Koreans seem to be adapting slowly to the rise of single-person households. However, it will be important to continue to empower grandpas to be comfortable in the kitchen so they can take care of themselves regardless of what life brings their way.
The writer (Heritagekorea21@gmail.com) is the chairperson of the Korea Heritage Education Institute (K*Heritage).
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