역전! 야매요리

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently started reading 신과합께, a webtoon hosted on Naver, as a way of studying Korean. 신과함께 can be a pretty meaty read sometimes, especially vocabulary-wise, so I started probing Husband for other webtoons that I might find interesting.

He had two recommendations, 이말년씨리즈 and 역전! 야매요리.

I read a few episodes of 이말년씨리즈. It's really funny, but has a lot of text, so that takes me just as much time to read per episode as 신과함께. However, I'm really enjoying 역전! 야매요리... a lot.

Sorry this picture is so small!

For starters, it combines two of my great loves, comics and food. Every episode is not only super funny but also teaches you a recipe. Really the benefits for me are tri-fold: entertainment, recipes, studying Korean!

This is a slightly easier read than 신과함께 maybe because I already know a lot of cooking and food vocabulary. The sometimes difficult part is that there are variations/irregularities in spelling and slang that I can't find in a dictionary and have to either guess at or ask Husband for help. Most of the time, luckily, I can figure these out from context.

The author/illustrator 정다정(Jeong Da-jeong) is a real talent for being so young (born in 1991). Both her writing and cartooning is weird (in the best way), offbeat, and hilarious. Several times I have laughed out loud while reading this webtoon.

I have no idea how to translate the title, so let me know if you have any ideas...

Husband said 역전 has a similar meaning to "Fighting!" and that 야매 means something along the lines of "fake" "pretend." Of course, 요리 is cooking. Granted he was busy doing something else at the time I asked him, so these might not have been his best translations. In any case, check out this webtoon and enjoy reading/cooking in Korean!