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

Sadness in Korea

This article that popped up on my facebook feed has been haunting and haunting me.  It's an article about the elderly taking their own lives after abandonment by their own children and society.  I suspect some of the elderly do it to not be a further burden on their struggling children, honestly, but many of them commit the awful final act after becoming depressed and abandoned by their children whom they poured their life and money into.  The whole situation hurts my heart.  How much sadness there must have been to get to that decision.  How much sadness they leave behind.

How it worked in times past in Korea was that Korean parents would spend their days giving their best to raise bright and healthy Korean kids - fighting tooth and nail for every single wonderful opportunity they hear of/ come by to give them that "edge" in such a homogeneous society.  Grown up Korean kids would then turn around and give their parents a roof over their heads, warm yummy family meals to join in (because everyone lived in one house), and a monthly stipend of "spending money." with occasional trips thrown in. With all the apartment living and two income families now in Korea constantly up to their ears in debt because they've fallen for the whole credit card con I can imagine how this is just getting much harder to do.

Cute Korean Paper Doll

Just saw this on KokoLiving and thought it was too adorable not to share:

It's a cute little Korean paper doll complete with a sidebar containing little facts about Korea that could easily be made into a cute bookmark.

Download Paper-dolls-world-korea (PDF)

Romi Haan of Haan Corporation Speaks at APEC Women & The Economy Summit

Recently, I attended the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation's Women & the Economy Summit in San Francisco.  One of the most impressive stories I heard was that of Romi Haan, a South Korean business leader and entrepreneur. It was wonderful to see a Korean woman sharing the world stage with business leaders from around the world. This is an excerpt of what I learned at the conference. ~Glennia

Romi Haan was a housewife in South Korea with a problem: how to keep the floors clean without spending hours a day doing it.  Because of the ondol tradition of heating homes through the floor, Koreans spend a great deal of time at home in a central room, on the floor.  As Romi says, "Koreans live on the floor. We sleep on the floor. We eat on the floor. We sit on the floor. We play on the floor." 

Keeping the floor clean is serious business for Korean women, and means daily washings, down on their hands and knees.  Romi wanted to free herself of this daily chore, or make it a little easier for herself and her friends.  So, she imagined a steam cleaner to do just that: clean the floor with less effort and cut the time spent on washing the floor in half. It was a way to get women up off the floor and out into the world.

When Romi approached a bank about a government loan program to get her product made, the bank officer asked her, "What company did your husband bankrupt that makes you now have to work?  Are you doing this for him?"

When she told him that her husband was not the reason she wanted to go into business, he didn't believe her. Her application was denied. Romi didn't take no for an answer, and persisted with her dream. She mortgaged her home and quit her job to pursue her invention.  She was able to get her business up and running in three years, but faced other hurdles. 

When Romi tried to market and distribute her product, she was met with skepticism and disdain by male buyers for department stores. She would go in to talk to them, and they would ask her, "Why do you need a steam cleaner when you have a vacuum cleaner?"

She explained that a vacuum cleaner would sweep the floor, but her cleaner would mop it. After an hour-long discussion the buyer would ask again, "Why do you need a steam cleaner when you have a vacuum cleaner?"

Ten years later, Romi Haan is now the CEO of a multinational, multimillion dollar appliance and beauty products company, Haan Corporation. She is one of the few female CEOs in South Korea, and her business is thriving. She represents a new breed of Korean women executives and a model of successful entrepreneurship. Her story is not atypical of the challenges that women face in the global economy, but her success is unfortunately too rare.

The APEC Women & the Economy Summit brought together women leaders, government officials, diplomats, and corporate innovators to discuss actions to improve the lives of women in the Asia-Pacific region, and by doing so, the world's economy. Recognizing that women are a vast, largely untapped resource for change and growth, the group spent a week in San Francisco working on plans for change.  This was one of several meetings around the Pacific Rim leading up to the APEC Summit in Hawaii in November, which President Obama will attend.
 
I was not able to stay very long at the Summit, but I was able to attend the Plenary Session in which Romi Haan appeared on a panel moderated by Tina Brown of The Daily Beast and Newsweek.  Also on the panel were Cherie Blair, wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and founder of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women; Susan Fleishman, Executive Vice President of Commincations for Warner Brothers Entertainment; Blanca Trevino, CEO of Softtek, a global Information Technololgy company based in Mexico; and Ilene Lang, President & CEO of Catalyst, a research and advisory firm that specializes in promoting women in business.

Why There Needs to be a Different Standard of Depression for Koreans

When I feel depressed, it's hard to tell the cause: is it stress in my life, my mood disorder, or merely because I am Korean?

Talk to any Korean person of my parents' generation about depression, and most likely they will equate it with laziness ("When we don't want to get out of bed or work hard, we don't call it depressed"),  privilege ("They don't have to worry about anything else"), or  insanity ("Are you going to tear up your clothes and put flowers in your hair?").  They just don't view it as a real chronic illness.

But yet, it obviously exists, even for Korean people.  Domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse, and suicide are major societal problems, and those often are side effects of mood disorders.

I'm starting to wonder if the problem lies in the usual criteria for diagnosis.  If you look at the normal list of symptoms for depression and you knew Korean people at all, it seems like we are ALL depressed!

According to the Mayo Clinic, depression symptoms include:

• Feelings of sadness or unhappiness
• Irritability or frustration, even over small matters
• Frequent thoughts of death, dying or suicide
• Crying spells for no apparent reason

In Korea, these are all considered normal.  We even have a word for it: han.  An excellent article in the LA Times on han can be found here.  We all carry around a sadness and trauma that is so ingrained it might as well be part of our genome.  Suffering and death are recurring themes in our art, our folklore, our history.  Hell, it's even the main philosophy of kimchi: preserve everything you can for the day -- and that day definitely will come -- when there is nothing.  It is the reason why when you piss off your mom, she says things like "Do you want me to die now?  Will that make you happy?"  Sigh.

• Reduced sex drive
• Feelings of worthlessness or guilt, fixating on past failures or blaming yourself when things aren't going right
• Changes in appetite — depression often causes decreased appetite and weight loss, but in some people it causes increased cravings for food and weight gain
• Agitation or restlessness — for example, pacing, hand-wringing or an inability to sit still
• Unexplained physical problems, such as back pain or headaches
• Loss of interest or pleasure in normal activities
• Insomnia or excessive sleeping

These things are also very common...but these I put the blame squarely on nurture, not nature.  I am still convinced that my parents had sex only two times in their lives: that is why my sister and I exist.  And Korean parents are the kings of the extreme guilt complex, unconstructive criticism, harsh-ass punishments, mysterious aches and pains, the neverending war against dust and hair on the floor, and equating food with love...which take care of the rest.  Again, a Korean would look at that list and think, "Yeah, so what?"

• Slowed thinking, speaking or body movements
• Indecisiveness, distractibility and decreased concentration
• Fatigue, tiredness and loss of energy — even small tasks may seem to require a lot of effort
• Trouble thinking, concentrating, making decisions and remembering things

These might be real bellweathers for us, but then again if I told my Korean doctor that I felt these symptoms, he would probably give me some nasty Chinese herbal potion to flush out my liver and reprimand me for being fat (in all seriousness, my childhood doctor's nickname for me was "Cow" and would constantly nag me to take diet pills.  He was a friend of my dad's.).  Maybe some Korean-specific research needs to be done, so we can get an idea of what depression looks like for us, or maybe we are indeed all afflicted with it.

--Julie

Back to School Shopping? What the heck is that?

Thank you to Crocs for sponsoring this blog post. Please click here to learn more about Crocs’ new Back to School line. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions expressed here are my own.

Having mostly grown up in Korea, Back to School shopping is a foreign concept to me. When I first heard about back to school shopping from some of my friends in jr. high school and high school, I was like, WHAT? You get a whole new set of clothes before starting school? It sounded like a fabulous idea to me but I was too scared to mention it to my dad or step mom. She must have learned about it some other way though because one time she took us to K-mart and we got to buy some school supples. No clothes or shoes, but still, I was happy.

Kimchi Mama Honor Roll: Sonya Thomas

This past Fourth of July Weekend, the annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest held a womens division for the first time.  The inaugural champion was Sonya Thomas, aka "The Black Widow," a 43-year-old Korean American, who won by eating 40 hot dogs in 10 minutes.

This is the first I had heard of The Black Widow, and I am a bit ashamed to admit that, because this was by far not her first competitive eating victory. In fact, since her debut in 2003, she has set and broken many world records, defeated men who are household names like Takeru Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut, and is currently ranked the #6 competitive eater in the world.  It is also worthy to note that Ms. Thomas achieves all this despite weighing in at 98 pounds.

After reading a few news articles, I was smitten.  I knew we Korean gals can pack it in like no one's business, but other than brief mentions on where she grew up in Korea, there was no mention of how being Korean helped or hindered her at all.  Here's the backstory, in her own words, to winning 29 competitive eating world titles.

Kimchi Mamas: Are your parents back in Korea aware of your competitive eating success, and if so, how do they feel about it?

Sonya Thomas: I think lots of Koreans feel negatively towards competitive eating, they think of it as a bit foolish: why do this instead of using your brain?  They also worry about my health, if my stomach will explode or something.  My parents were the same way when they first heard about it.  In fact, I didn't actually eat that much as a child, so they were totally surprised.  They were worried, but after they saw me on the news, they were happy for me.  Now, they're not exactly proud, but they know their daughter did something special.

KM: That sounds like the best you can ask for with any Korean parent.  Was there anything from your childhood that helps you at all today? 

ST: From childhood to now, I have always been competitive, I always want to be the best, to show people I'm special.  I'm not really outgoing, kind of shy, but anything active, I'm determined to show people I "have it."

KM: Oh wow.  Where does that drive come from?

ST: I was born in 1967, and it was a hard time for Korea, and my family was very poor.  My parents, 2 brothers, my sister, and I lived in a 1 room house.  Not a lot of people could afford to eat white rice, so they would mix their rice with barley.  But our family's rice was all barley!  The American government also gave us flour...so we had noodles everyday.  

I had to be brave, more brave then than now.  My first day of elementary school, I walked there by myself, and registered myself.  After that, I always tried to help my parents earn money.  I remember one time, I was 8 or 9, and we went to the ocean to catch clams.  I kept pushing myself to work faster and faster, and I dug up more than my mom!  About 40 pounds of clams!  Afterwards, as we opened the shells, I was the fastest.  I was the third child, but I was the boss!  [Laughs]

KM: You sound like you'd be the perfect athlete.

ST: During school, I competed a lot in sports, but I wasn't that good.  I wasn't a fast runner, I was too short and not a good enough shooter for basketball, and my reflexes were too slow for badminton.  But I still wanted to be the best at something.  Competitive eaters aren't only competitive in eating; we must be competitive in other things.  I was born like that, always wanting to do something special all the time, something different from other people.  Eating is one of my skills.  In others, if I'm not that great, i just give up and try something else. 

KM: That is so Korean!

ST: [Laughs] Yes, it's very Korean: very competitive, very "hurry hurry,' no patience.

KM: Sonya, thank you so much for taking the time out to talk to us.  Best of luck, and FIGHTING!!!

Sonya Thomas' next competition will be at the Buffalo Wing Festival in Buffalo, NY during Labor Day Weekend.

Sonya Thomas' homepage

Sonya Thomas on Wikipedia

Article from the Chosun Ilbo

"Kimchi Chronicles" on PBS

Marja Vongerichten, wife of three-star Michelin chef Jean-George Vongerichten, has created a series that seems tailor-made for us Kimchi Mamas.  Part travelogue, part documentary of self-discovery, part cooking show, "Kimchi Chronicles" takes the Vongerichtens around Korea, highlighting all the different dishes and culinary traditions, then interpreting them for the home kitchen with the help of...Hugh Jackman.  Here is a clip of Marja introducing the rest of the gang to what looks like 육개장 (yukgaejang).

An extra-long preview of the series can be seen on the New York Times site.  There, you will be bombarded with image after image of HD deliciousness...I can't watch it without drooling!

Marja will also be publishing a cookbook in August, and it's already up for preorders on Amazon.  Just think about it: authentic Korean recipes adapted for the western home kitchen, written in English, from a Michelin-star family...I can't wait to get my hands on it!  Here are some pics:

The show will make its nationwide debut in July, but it is currently running in New York (you lucky bums).  If you have seen it, please let us know what you thought below!  How's the cinematography?  Does it accurately portray Korea and Koreans?  How much does Marja's personal life story come into play?  Is it  food porn, and/or Hugh porn?  Enquiring minds would like to know!

--Julie

PS: Later this summer when they are released, we will be giving away DVD sets of the series as well as the cookbook, so stay tuned!!!

PPS: All throughout writing this, I kept misspelling "Hugh Jackman" as "Huge Jackman."  Freudian much?

PPPS: Man...I am HUNGRY.

Korea's Got Talent: Sung-Bong Choi

I have a hard heart when it comes to reality television, but even I couldn't stop the tears from flowing when I watched this:

Orphaned at the age of three and left to fend for himself starting from the age of FIVE, Sung-Bong Choi sold gum and Bacchus drinks on the street to survive.  He did not attend school until high school, and during his many nights wandering alone through the city, he listened in on vocal lessons to learn how to sing.

I hesitate to call him Korea's Susan Boyle, not because of any lack of talent, but because there is too much tragedy staining the transcendence.  In his pre-performance interview, Mr. Choi stated he entered this competition so he could be normal like other people, not famous or rich or notorious.  I find that very telling of his strong character, and since he had been let down in such a profound way by his government and fellow citizenry, I hope his appearance on this show will at least cement a sure and stable future for him, never lacking in comfort or company.

--Julie

Guns in America

There is an issue in which South Korea far surpasses the USA. Guns. Gun control. Gun-related deaths. Etc.

This issue has been on my mind for a long time but Ask A Korean!'s most recent post encouraged me to write this posts.

I don't really have much to say, except for the fact that gun use in America is WAY out of control. WAY WAY WAY out of control. It pains me to know that many many deaths could be prevented simply by making it harder to own guns. Just give me hand guns, that would solve a lot of problems. Let the NRA have their hunting rifles. Change the constitution, I don't care. Just get these damn guns off the streets.