Student to Student

Study in Korea

Kimchi at Midnight

By Kate Pope, Cardinal Stritch Univ.

In Korea no cook uses sugar, and sweet desserts are only served at holidays. Tables are close to the ground and diners eat sitting cross-legged on cushions. Stainless steel chopsticks and spoons are the only utensils, and a bowl of rice occupies the place where a plate might be. Seven or eight side dishes in miniscule bowls fill the table; as they eat, people reach across the table and share from the same group of bowls. Among the dishes is always a peppery concoction called kimchi. Without it, the diners may as well not have eaten.

Chai and her family introduced me to kimchi immediately upon my arrival in Seoul. They took me to a restaurant, invited me to sit, and ordered. Then the waitress placed a bowl in the center of the table and Chai began motioning for me to try it. Inside the bowl was something that looked like dyed lettuce and smelled like pepper and garlic. Three glasses of water later, I finished my portion. A week later, I could eat the same amount with only one glass of water. A few days later, Chai's mom offered to teach me to make it.

At midnight, she gathered the pans and ingredients, spread newspaper on the floor, pulled bags of cabbage and radishes from the pantry, and began mixing her version of the seasoning. Then we soaked the vegetables in red pepper and sealed them for ripening. A reasonable person doesn't ask people to kneel on the floor at midnight in puddles of pepper sauce, stain elbows red, and wade through vats of leaves just to have spicy lettuce for lunch the next day. Reason says go to sleep.

I wanted my American family to know how this felt, so I began planning a Korean meal for them immediately upon returning home. I bought a 20-pound bag of sticky rice at the Asian grocery store, untucked other Korean ingredients from the corners of my suitcase, and began concocting kimchi, pickled radish, sticky rice, Korean cakes, and seaweed rolls as solemnly as if I was preparing for a sacrament. I set the table with miniature bowls, chopsticks, and round cups. I taught my mom and dad to mimic my behavior with chopsticks, to lean into the bowls as they ate, and to eat directly out of the side dishes instead of taking individual portions.

I thought this would bring Korea back. I thought that if my family and I shared kimchi we would connect in the Korean way and that if they ate kimchi they would experience Korea--or at least understand what I felt. I thought I would feel as if I were in Korea again--sitting on the anchor at Inchon's port, hearing "Chai-na," as Chai's mom called her to the kitchen, watching brides pose for pictures at Kyongbokkung Palace, and breathing high, clean air from the top of Pulguksa Temple. The kimchi I made didn't ferment, though. The rice cakes resembled gray matter, and the kim pap crunched flat when I rolled it. When we sat to eat, my mom poured soy sauce on her rice, my dad's hands cramped from using the chopsticks, and both had to revert to forks and plates.

I tried to tell them stories as we ate-- stories of what I had thought and felt when I was away and the differences between America and Korea. I wanted them to feel what I was feeling, to imagine the man who gathered laundry every morning in Seoul and the feel of bare feet on the heated floor. By eating kimchi I wanted them, in a small way, to be in Korea with me and to experience it with me. I couldn't recreate Korea, though. We were in America, and all I had of Korea were new recipes, stainless steel chopsticks, and five rolls of film--tourist trinkets that I now realize I was using to explain the meaning of the place.

I couldn't bring my parents to Chai's home at midnight. They have a separate reality in a separate world--a separate plate, a separate meal, and a separate way of making it. I must either isolate and reserve my thoughts for only myself or risk reducing them to snapshots and anecdotes. I'll have to enjoy kimchi and its memories alone, without them. That's a daunting thought. It shouldn't surprise me, though. I'm in America again, and Americans don't sit together on the floor at midnight. We sit separately, in chairs.

KATE POPE is studying English and Writing at Cardinal Stritch Univ. in Milwaukee, WI. She lived with a family in South Korea for three weeks as part of an independent study project.