HeyJaredUnderstanding Korea, One Story at a Time Podcast
Welcome to Growing Up in Korea – The Audio SeriesI’m Dr. Jiwon Yoon, a writer and former professor exploring what it means to grow up in Korean society—through the lens of education, parenting, and social pressure.Each episode features an audio version of my essays—narrated…
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 4
- Latest publication
- Sep 22, 2026
- Audience
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 16, 2026
Latest episodes
🎧Reading a School Lunch Backward (opens the original)
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In a Korean school, “teacher” can be someone who plans your lunch. And the person cooking it might end up competing on Netflix. Why does South Korea have nutrition teachers? This episode explores the people behind Korean school lunches: dietitians, teachers, cooks, and the different kinds of expertise their titles recognize. Along the way, we meet Kim Min-ji, whose school menus became an online sensation, and Lee Mi-yeong, the “Master of School Meals” from Culinary Class Wars . Their stories rai
🎧The Lunch Korea Built (opens the original)
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Before Korea’s stainless-steel lunch trays, there were dosirak : lunches packed at dawn, compared at shared desks, and, in some classrooms, inspected by teachers checking the grains in a child’s rice. After a month of research, conversations, and memory-gathering, I trace the lived history behind Korean school lunch: the kindergarten that assigned my mother a different side dish to pack each day; the coal stove in my fourth-grade classroom; the families who packed two lunchboxes because school l
🎧A New Season Begins With School Lunch (opens the original)
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A Korean school lunch tray looks simple: rice, soup, kimchi, and a few side dishes. Follow it far enough, though, and it leads straight into politics, invisible labor, hagwon schedules, convenience-store dinners, child poverty, and the very different ways childhood can look depending on the family you are born into. That is where this new season is headed. Also in this episode: I return after a two-month break, explain the podcast’s new Tuesday rhythm, and introduce a project I have been quietly
🎧65. I Said I Was Taking a Break. Here’s the Whole Story. (opens the original)
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Yes, I did say I was taking a break last week. And yet, here I am in your feed again. (Life comes at you fast, especially during the summer.) In this special, highly personal episode of Understanding Korea, One Story at a Time , I am sitting down with a cup of coffee to share the honest story behind my summer hiatus. No formal essays today, just a warm, behind-the-scenes chat about what happens when life, parenting, and independent writing collide. Read the companion newsletter here: I Said I Wa
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