'Sexy cooking men' break kitchen barrier

After work on a recent Friday, 53-year-old Lee Jin-soo headed for the Happy Guys Cooking Class, where he joined six other mostly middle-aged men in tall white hats and aprons.

Lee, who runs a business making compression bags for bedding, gently handled abalone and shrimp and made a rice crust that went into the Korean stew of chicken and seafood on the evening's menu.

He is one of a growing number of men taking up cooking in a country where men have long done little housework. South Korean men were at the bottom in an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development global survey last year on housework, with just 21 minutes a day.