FoodTok, the portmanteau of “food” and “TikTok,” plays a big part in an avid foodie’s life. While scrolling through TikTok to watch various food preparation videos or even mukbangs, it is inevitable that videos by The Korean Vegan will pop up on the For You Page (FYP). Joanne Lee Molinaro, better known as The Korean Vegan, is a Korean American attorney by day, prominent vegan food blogger and author by night. She branched out to short-form media during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020 and began posting short clips that show viewers snippets of her life during quarantine. Since then, she has taken various social media platforms by storm, gaining more than three million followers on TikTok and one million subscribers on YouTube to this day. Through her content, she constantly adds plant-based twists to Korean cuisine and uses her creative storytelling skills to narrate personal stories about her immigrant family, which touch the hearts of many.

On Molinaro’s website, it is mentioned that she “veganizes Korean food,” and “Koreanizes everything else.” Arguably so, the content that The Korean Vegan shares on TikTok can be summarized in one sentence: posting her own reimagined recipes for Korean food. However, she has truly made far-reaching changes in the way people share recipe videos online. Since 2020, she has found solace in opening up on TikTok through a genre she coined “story time videos,” where she pairs cooking tutorial videos with voiceovers that share personal anecdotes about her Korean roots, childhood traumas, and even broken relationships. In a short 60-second video, the dish is prepared, and her viewers will be able to learn a snippet about both her life and cuisine.

Molinaro started embarking on her content-making journey when her husband decided to go vegan in 2016. The initial motivation for her conversion to veganism was driven by this, but she was worried that she would not be able to show her love through cooking. In an interview with Self, an American online magazine, she mentioned that she started to modify traditional Korean recipes to make them vegan so that she could enjoy the food her family has always eaten, and to make them taste as similar as possible to the original dishes. Due to the lack of vegan options in Korean cuisine, Molinaro was concerned that she would lose touch with her Korean roots; yet, she has succeeded in finding her own plant-based substitutes for condiments such as fish sauce.

When Molinaro first got her book deal in 2018, she felt that she still needed to learn a lot more about Korean food to have the authority to write vegan recipes for other people to follow. Since then, she started digging into the roots of her family history to include various vignettes in her cookbook, titled The Korean Vegan Cookbook: Reflections and Recipes from Omma’s Kitchen. She openly revealed that she had learned about the Japanese occupation of Korea as well as the Korean War, her grandparents’ escape from North Korea, and her parents’ stories of being immigrants in the United States (U.S.) in her interview with Self. These stories can be found scattered throughout both her videos and cookbook, and her reflections on culture and family inspire viewers and readers alike.

FoodTok has become an increasingly popular genre of content, and it is an important trend that continues to change the way we think about food and cooking in an interconnected global world. Ultimately, it can be said that The Korean Vegan’s content is a prominent storm in a teacup because she actively creates rich content concerning very niche areas of interest. In that regard, she has successfully achieved her goal of changing the American perspective on immigrants in the country, piquing interest and increasing awareness along her journey.