All the recent colourful posts about wok and ladle, and the talk about Junho’s hands, led me to a fast rewatch of Wok of Love, and I just can’t miss this opportunity to share some intentional and unintentional meta jokes with the Beanies.

No.1: In ep 11 (half hour, full hour episode 6) Junho and Jang Hyuk decide to arm wrestle. Jang Hyuk first grabs Junho’s right hand which makes him wince from pain because it is badly hurt, then Junho asks to do it with left hands.

Meta fact: Junho is left-handed. Once after he lost to Taec in arm wrestling, he asked to do it with left hands to make it even, and he ended up breaking Taec’s arm. (Or Teac’s massive arm muscle did it, that case is still up for dispute.)

No.2 : Jang Hyuk holds his fingers downwards whenever he wants to show number 2 (and sometimes 3). It is the exact gesture Junho uses when greeting as a member of 2PM band. (Did I intentionally put this one after no.2? Yes, yes, of course I did, why do you ask?)

No.3 : There is a scene in ep 16 (8) where Junho is making a dish and Jung Ryu Won is filming him to rewatch and learn. Later Junho watches the video and complains that she has only filmed his hands and there is no shot of his face to show respect for the person who is doing it.

Unintentional? meta fact: In a variety show after finishing The Red Sleeve, Junho says that he had learned archery for another movie before, and had practiced a lot for TRS, but as the arrow was going to be lighted with fire and would be too hot the staff were unwilling to let him do it himself.

They were supposed to take a separate shot of his face, and have a body double do the actual shooting. But Junho persuaded them to let him do it himself and asked for the scene to be made full bodied and in one shot so that it would be obvious that he is doing it himself.

Then he added: In Wok of Love I cut, prepared, and cooked soooo much food, but the camera mostly shows either my hands or my face. It disappointed me that some people might not believe that I did it all myself.

It made me laugh so much when I heard this, remembering what he said in the show. Also, somebody should have told him that we don’t need to see his face to recognize his hands!

No.4 : Another unintentional meta fact, as Chief Kim aired one year before WoL.

Seo Yul has 2 instances with shrimp (which is pronounced like JRW’s name Sae Woo, and therefore a constant source of puns in WoL).
One, where he throws shrimp snacks at Chief Kim, and another one where he chooses “sae woo” from the snack rack in a shop.

P.s. the gif is behind the scenes of course.