Jewel in the Palace

A costume epic that behaves like a food-systems documentary

Before you watch

  • watch the assigned episodes
  • bring one scene where food is doing more work than just being food
  • a meal that marks who outranks whom, or a punishment that runs through the kitchen rather than around it

What we’re testing

We work scene by scene through the food system the drama depicts: royal cuisine, medicine, and rank.

Every pass this semester asks the same two questions — what does this get right, and what does it invent.

The real Jang-geum appears in the historical record in a handful of lines. Everything else is the writers filling the gaps.