For our third series of podcasts produced in collaboration with Meant to Be Eaten on Heritage Radio Network, we sit down (virtually) with authors who contributed to our final issue of 2020, which continues to feature COVID-19 Dispatches, but also original research articles around the themes of “Working with Ingredients”, “Taste and Technology in East Asia”, “Excursions”, and “Dolce”.
For this episode, Editorial Collective member Krishnendu Ray is joined by Kyoungjin Bae whose article, “Taste as Governor: Soy Sauce in Late Chosŏn and Colonial Korea” (featured as part of the Taste and Technology in East Asia roundtable), explores the production, consumption, and class implications of soy sauce in Korea from the 18th to the 20th century, a period which included an influx of Japanese commodities on the Korean market as a result of colonization, as well as the more general effects of industrialization on a nation who had brewed their own soy sauce from the early modern period.
