Cookbooks and the Making of Women's Authorship in the 1933 Copyright Case

Abstract: In 1933, Bang Sinyeong (1890–1977), author of Recipes for Joseon Cuisine ( Joseon yorijebeop ), one of the earliest and most influential modern cookbooks of the twentieth century, filed an injunction against Yi Yonggi's (1875–1933) cookbook Unrivalled New Recipes in Joseon ( Joseon mussang sinsigyorijebeop ). Although this case has been commemorated as a pivotal moment in the establishment of Korea's modern copyright regime, the litigation process was deeply entangled with the restructuring of the modern book industry and the discursive ascendancy of modern domesticity. By closely examining the lawsuit, this paper argues that Bang Sinyeong's entitlement to copyright derived not from the originality of her recipes but from her gendered positionality—authorized by the contemporary demand that women's cooking served as a form of modern knowledge essential to social engineering.