Kimchi Mamas

A Holocaust Ignored

I feel nauseated!  I have never before in my life read something that gave me a physical reaction like this. I have the physical urge to throw up! I don’t even know where to begin. I’m going to try... Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, who otherwise looks to be a human, said that the rape of women (comfort woman) was ok because it relaxed their rapists (Japanese soldiers).

Comfort women were NOT prostitutes! They were set up to be raped by Japanese soldiers by the Japanese government.  

Comfort women were kept in small cubicles that resembled micro-sized portapotties.  They were forced to stay in these cells without being let out except every couple of weeks to wash themselves. These enclosures had chamber pots within them.  Every fifteen minutes a Japanese soldier would enter and rape the woman inside the cubicle, and if the woman in anyway rebelled, she was pulled out, put to death and left where other women could see her as a warning.  The soldiers gunned down lines of women if they caught STDs, instead of treating them. The women were treated as less than human all those years ago, and now Hashimoto dehumanizes them again.

What if a German politician came out and said that some part of the Holocaust was necessary? What if he said that the victims of the holocaust deserved kind words, but that killing them, torturing them, using them as slaves made the German soldiers relax, made them feel good because they were at war, and provided needed relief?  How would the world react to that statement?  How would the victims of holocaust feel?  Is there inherently some difference between how the world views the victims of one country-wide tragedy to another? I wonder why one article on the BBC website is all the press this has received, and I wonder how different it might be if it were about another set of victims. 

I cannot understand where Hashimoto is coming from but you can read it for yourself here:

“Japan WWII ‘comfort woman’ were ‘necessary’ - Hashimoto

- Nancy

Spicy! Seeking Asian Female

Have you read this review of the documentary Seeking Asian Female?  What are your thoughts?  I have a non-Asian male acquaintance who has a definitive "type" of woman - tiny, feisty, hardworking, future-baby/homemaking Filpina; but he's also the uber-geeky American guy who long-distance "dates" women in other countries, making the occasional trip east when funds allow.

 

Seeking Asian Female, by Debbie Lum

 

I found the story kind of fascinating - I, too, cringed, but still, I couldn't stop reading.  Would you, like Sandy, stay so you wouldn't lose face upon finding that your knight in shining armor was not so shiny?  Does it matter how they start if they fall in love with each other in the end?

Netflix doesn't have the Debbie Lum's documentary quite yet, but I've saved it to my queue... now, will I actually watch this when it arrives in mailbox?

--Rikki

Happy Omma's Daze!

Just a little Mother's Day fun from our K-boy, Mike Song, and his ever-faithful and good humoured Omma, Laura.

Thanks to iamkoream.com for the head's up . . .




--Angie in Texas is now planning a dubstep inspired dance.

Notice Anything Different About Us?

Welcome to the newly redesigned Kimchi Mamas site!

Please poke around and get re-acquainted, and let us know if there are any dead links or other oddities.

So, for the internet equivalent of "Testing Testing 123," here is an animated gif of the cutest Kimchi Baby in the world, Yerin Park of YouTube fame.  Hopefully she doesn't react to our new look-and-feel this way:

Here now is a video of Yerin, who is now old enough to talk, and her voice and mannerisms are so freaking cute I diiiiiiiiie:

Dari: The First Bilingual Anthology of LGBTQ Korean American Stories and Art

May is dear to me for several reasons: it is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, and it is also Mental Health Awareness Month!  

In those veins, I present to you a book released today by the Dari Project, a New York-based all-volunteer consortium that aims to increase awareness and acceptance of LGBTQ people of Korean descent in Korean American communities.  They develop resources to share the experiences of LGBTQ Korean Americans, ranging from homophobia in their KA communities, coming out, building relationships with family, and membership in faith communities.

On May 2, the Dari Project will be unveiling a bilingual publication that contains a collection of personal stories written by LGBT Korean Americans. The book contains 25 personal essays covering a variety of themes -- coming out to immigrant parents, responding to homophobia/transphobia in the Korean church, organizing the community after a gay bashing in NYC's Koreatown, etc. The contributors live across the US and South Korea, and include a diverse array of identities within the Korean American community -- biracial Koreans, adoptees and trans people.

I love their name, because dari means both legs and bridge, and this anthology seeks to provide both: support for the LGBTQ community, and a way to bridge Korean Americans from different generations, ideologies, and languages.

Check out their gorgeous logo:

Copies of the book can be requested on the Dari Project's website.

h/t to my friend and heroine, Andy Marra

Happy May Day! Video Letter From Julie!

Hi all--

I thought it would be faster to make some announcements via video, but forgot that it would take a lot shorter for YOU if I wrote them out!  So the too long; didn't watch version is:

1. New Kimchi Mamas!  Check them out!  They are awesome, and I'm very excited to hear more from them.

2. Site redesign going up this weekend!  Please feel free to poke around on Monday, and email us at the kimchimamas at gmail dot com address with any issues you may encounter.

3. Book Club!  We will be reading a new book every two months, and discussing it right here on the site.  This month's selection is Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin.  We will put up a book discussion post on June 1, so that gives you all of May to locate a copy and read it.  

--Julie

PS: Yes, I am in one of those life stages where I have fine lines AND zits!  No, I wasn't stoned, but I have been staring at a screen all day, so pardon my red eyes and mistaking June for January, lol!

Introducing...Kimchi Mama Rikki!

Here is the third new member of the Kimchi Mama sisterhood, Rikki from Optimistic Slacker!  Please welcome her to the fold!

Love, your Kimchi Mamas

Some nights ago, I had my first ever guided meditation session. I am not religious or deeply spiritual, just a silly girl who's a little lost & looking for direction... maybe even some solace. We had a discussion on how those who cause you pain in life may actually be Buddhas helping guide you along your spiritual path by teaching valuable lessons, like patience. Maybe the dude who cut you off in traffic this morning was actually a Buddha and he felt perfectly justified in cutting you off because he knew it could help you to be a better person. As everyone was contemplating this, all I could hear was me-ma in my head "he was justified in being an ass? I'll show him!" The closing meditation "object" was I will always cherish every living being... It was a bit surreal. Every time I made it through this thought, I'd envision me-ma slapping someone upside the head or telling them what's what. Cherish. Ha.

A Culinary Tour of Koreatown with Anthony Bourdain and a Couple Bros

Episode Two of "Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown," a new show on CNN that promises to "take you to exotic global destinations through Bourdain's unique lens," featured Los Angeles' Koreatown last week:

 

Anthony hung out with two famous Korean American "bad boys": Roy Choi of Kogi foodtruck fame and David Choe, street artist and newly-minted multimillionaire.  Roy and David took Anthony on a culinary tour of K-town, including surprising stops at Sizzler and Jollibee, as well as profiling their families' compelling stories.  Roy even gave an excellent breakdown of the 1992 LA Riots from the Korean community's point of view, a viewpoint that is not often explained so poignantly on mainstream media.

I really enjoyed the show, being a fan of all three gentlemen, and feeling more and more proud as they introduced Anthony to each new beloved haunt: the glories of Beverly Soon Tofu, the rohsu gui at Dong Il Jang, and this amazing-looking dumpling place called Myung In Dumplings which I now have made my life's goal to find and set up camp in.  The Koreatown they showed him was sexy, delicious, laid-back, and rife with gorgeous examples of the ever-fabled melting pot.  

One stick in my craw was the lack of a strong female Korean American voice.  David Choe's mom was featured quite heavily, which I appreciated, but if he's looking for "bad Koreans," he would have benefitted from getting to know some Korean renegade riot girls too!  I personally would have loved to have taken Anthony around Galleria market, fed him gamja tang, haemul jungol, and soondae, and drink him under the table at the noraebang!  Maybe next time, bro!

--Julie

His own purple trail

 

 

Did I ever tell you what a wonderful hapa-child I have?

When he was three years old his favorite color was purple.  He loved purple because it was the color associated with Donatello, his favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.  He declared that his first car would be purple.  When I said, “Well, you might change your mind about that,” he began to cry, and I learned that he was a sensitive soul.

When we bought him a bike, we knew that we had to find a purple one, and finally did at a garage sale.  It was purple and in fantastic condition, but it also happened to be a girl’s bike.  The very next day he proudly walked out to the courtyard full of boys who were mostly older and larger than he was.  I nervously listened from my kitchen, fearing the reaction that he might get and how he might feel afterwards.

Sure enough, the boys all yelled, “Hey that is a girl’s bike!”  The next few minutes of silence lasted almost too long for me, but it was broken when I heard the indignant little voice of my son:

   Dash:   Am I a boy or a girl?

    The boys:   A boy.

    Dash:  Whose bike is this?

    The boys:  Yours.

    Dash:  This is my bike?

    The boys:  Yes!

    Dash:   And I’m a boy?

    The boys:  Yes.

    Dash:  Then this is a boy’s bike.

    The boys:   Oh.  Well alright.

I quietly held up my fist and shook it in the air, the proudest I could imagine of my little three year old!  The boys never mentioned it again.

Later he entered UC Berkeley School of Law at nineteen years of age, and was one of the youngest students in the fiercely competitive environment.  As a kid who grew up playing and listening to punk rock music, his style was heavily affected by this, and in spite of the formal attire of most of his peers, my son dressed to fit his “punk” roots with skinny jeans and graphic t’s..  One of the older students took a photo of him wearing a pink t-shirt and his tight black pants, in pretense of liking it, and then sharing it around the campus, causing my son to become butt of many jokes. 

He decided to wear that shirt every day for months (washing it, of course) in response to their antics and would not back down.  I urged him to stop wearing that shirt but to no avail.  It broke my heart to know what was happening to him but looking back now, I am impressed with his fearlessness.  He almost quit the school, but finished the grueling three years of law school with those same bullies graduating around him.  In his tradition, after successfully graduating with his law degree, he refused to practice law, pursuing instead comedic acting, writing, stand up, and producing. 

The photo above is of him playing a character from an upcoming web film project of his that he is writing/producing/directing, a project that combines his love for superheroes and passion for creating his own path: his own purple trail.

- Nancy

Mother Father Gentle-Wha?

Have you seen the new PSY music video? 

 

You might be thinking: What in the world?  Mother Father Gentlemen?  What the heck is that?  Because that’s what I thought the first time through.  But I did have to admit it was catchy.  So I watched it again….and I think I get it.  At least what it means to me.