A Study on the Transmission and Sustainability of ‘Making Traditional Soy Sauce’ in Korea

This paper investigates the transmission of food as an intangible cultural heritage and tries to answer what maintains and promotes traditional food culture, though researching into the specific example of ‘making traditional soy sauce.’ For that, I chose three different cases to research into the continuation and change in the transmission of traditional soy sauce making.The first instance is when the informant makes traditional soy sauce by herself. The second example is when the informant makes traditional soy sauce with ready-made soybean lumps.The last case is that people sharing the same ideology about food organize a community(‘kye’) and make soy sauce together each year and reserve ‘seed soy sauce.’ This is a new type of food community.The changes in tools and skills, in production and consumption, and in food communities caused changes in the transmission of traditional soy sauce making.Because of these factors, the way of making traditional soy sauce is changing a lot. The informants, however, believed that the tradition of ‘making soy sauce’ will last, as far as the taste of soy sauce made in the traditional method stays the same. Therefore, we need to make an effort to sustain communities of people who remember and enjoy the taste of traditional soy sauce in order to keep the tradition of making traditional soy sauce.