Yoo Jae-suk also shocked: “Even in 2020?” Chef Jung Ji-sun confesses to discrimination against female chefs [You Quiz on the Block][Byeolbyeol TV]

*This content was translated by AI.View Original

Chef Jung Ji-sun revealed the discrimination she faced simply for being a woman, leaving Yoo Jae-suk stunned.

Jung, a Chinese cuisine chef with 24 years of experience, appeared on the tvN variety show “You Quiz on the Block,” which aired on the 4th.

On that day, reflecting on when she first started working in Chinese cuisine, Jung stated, “In 2004, there were almost no female chefs not only in Chinese cuisine but across the entire food service industry. It was about one out of ten, or one out of twenty.”

She added, “There was a prevailing notion that women would eventually quit anyway, so everything felt like a wall. Even holding a single knife drew reactions of ‘Who do you think you are?’ People even criticized me for stepping on the footrest to get up onto the griddle.”

Jung continued, “The head chef liked developing sauces, but he wouldn’t share his methods even when I was curious. He would go into a separate room to mix them. I realized I couldn’t grow in that environment. Every day, all I did was prep ingredients.”

Jung later went to China to study and learn cooking, but she said she still faced difficulties finding employment after returning home due to her gender. “I had won a cooking competition and held certifications, so I felt proud, but no one would hire me,” Jung recalled. “If ‘female’ was written on my resume, they wouldn’t even look at it. When I called, they coldly told me, ‘We don’t hire women.’”

She confided, “I had gone abroad to study and built up a lot of experience, so it was incredibly difficult to realize that none of it seemed to matter.”

In particular, Jung revealed that she feared the prejudice against female chefs even when opening her own Chinese restaurant in 2020.

“I opened the restaurant under my husband’s name because I was afraid no one would come if they heard Chef Jung Ji-sun had opened a place,” she said. “There was a dismissive attitude toward the idea of a female chef running a Chinese restaurant.”

Hearing this, Yoo Jae-suk reacted with disbelief, saying, “Even in 2020? By 2020, surely…”

Jung explained, “If they don’t say it to your face, doesn’t that mean there’s a lot of talk behind your back? At the time, I wasn’t completely unknown, but I didn’t put my name forward. I was worried that the restaurant might fail because of the name ‘Jung Ji-sun,’ so I kept it hidden.”

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*This content was translated by AI.View Original