김치이야기. Kimchi Stories.

At least salt was easy to find in Ludwigshafen in 1969, but napa cabbage wasn’t available back then. So Kyung-Hee says that Halmoni used ordinary white cabbage to make her kimchi instead. The lines blur between tradition, memory, attribution, historical sources – between the perspectives of me, my mother Kyung-Hee, my grandmother Halmoni, others with similar stories...and what really happened in the life of my Halmoni, who feels so close and yet so distant at the same time. What was it like for her? How did it taste, how did it smell, this new life in Germany? A country she didn’t know, her first time outside Korea. Far from home, far from her children and her husband. Called through a three-year work contract to support the German health system. To earn money – money that would help lift her family out of poverty. To pay for the education of her four younger children, so they could have a better life than the two eldest, who were left to fend for themselves in Seoul. Did she have any idea that those two – my mother and my aunt, Duck-Hee – would eventually follow in her footsteps and leave Korea as well?

What was it like for Halmoni when she first arrived? Did she travel with other nurses from Gwangju, South Korea? Did she know what to expect in this strange place? What was it like to work in the city hospital? Long days and night shifts, as I’ve heard from similar stories, and generally not the best living conditions. Kyung-Hee tells me that after her shifts, Halmoni stayed up late into the night to learn the German language. It was much harder for her, being older, than for her younger colleagues. Foreign staff were far below the German nurses in the nursing hierarchy. She was given a German name – instead of calling her Hyun-Sun or Frau Yu, they called her Irmgard. How did she feel about this? I don’t want to imagine how she was treated by patients and fellow nurses. She was one of those labelled “guest worker”, “foreigner”, “Asian” or other things. Would she have been happy to know that ten years after her arrival, Korean migrant workers were fighting to stay in Germany when they were supposed to be deported at the end of their contracts? In fact, it wouldn’t have made any difference to her own intention which had always been to return to Korea as soon as possible.
I wonder if she ever imagined that fate would send my young father, Rudolf, to school not far from where she was working at the time? Did their paths ever cross? I find myself dreaming of introducing my Halmoni to the German grandmother we later also called Halmoni.

I picture myself sitting next to her in her dormitory, fresh rice steaming in her rice cooker. I’m sure she had home-made kimchi to go with it. Maybe she made it with her Korean colleagues, as other former nurses have described?
I only recently learned that the electric rice cooker, in which we always cooked rice at home, actually came along with her from Korea to Germany. This silent witness to her journey stayed with her daughter in the country, even after she herself was eventually transported back to Korea when she became seriously ill.
Did Halmoni also cook other Korean dishes? Perhaps only occasionally, as Kyung-Hee remembers her reheating leftovers from the hospital to save money. And in those days, garlic wasn’t commonly used in Germany – its smell must have been quite unpopular with both colleagues and patients.
Did she still use garlic in her cooking? Maybe as a way to keep part of her connection to home alive through familiar flavours, finding comfort and strength in them?

Bring a mixture of rice flour, water and sugar to the boil. No, wait – Kyung-Hee’s recipe doesn’t call for sugar – or rice flour, for that matter. These industrially produced ingredients aren’t really necessary and weren’t even used in rural Korea in the old days. But rice has always been crucial, both in the countryside and in the city. Bap: the word for rice, also means “food” in a broader sense, which explains why my Eumeuni still greets me with “Have you eaten well?” Even in our family, no matter how far away from Korea we lived, there was always rice on the table. Ever since we moved from Lesotho to Germany, Halmoni’s retro rice cooker has been in daily use. The rice often came in my mother’s special version: mixed with millet, buckwheat, spelt or bean sprouts. And there were always lots of vegetables, with little oil, fat or additives. At the time, I didn’t think it tasted very good – too healthy. Now it tastes like home.

The best part was always the kimchi that went along with it, whether it was the standard version or made with radish or cucumber. There were always two or three jars of it on the balcony of our home close to Heidelberg. We’d take out portions for each meal, cut it into bite-sized pieces with scissors and serve it with chopsticks. For me, kimchi was essential, a reliable way to liven up otherwise bland European dishes. And then there was gochu-garu, the chilli powder adding extra spice and flavour. This special chilli powder was sold by a Korean vendor who came to the Korean language school every Saturday. As a reward for getting up early, we were allowed to buy snacks like saeu-gang or sweet rice cake, from him after class. A small motivation in an otherwise frustrating schooling experience – all the other kids seemed to speak much better Korean than those of us in the “bad” class. Our class, mostly consisting of half-Koreans, had a reputation for being undisciplined, too rebellious, not Korean enough. And not without reason: my little brother and I would have exhausting negotiations with Kyung-Hee every weekend, so that she would often have to push us to get us to go to Korean class. Today, I start understanding how hard it must have been for her to witness our resistance to learning her language. And I regret the gap left in the way the two of us can communicate and bond.

No, actually. No garlic – at least not in my Eumeuni’s kimchi.
Garlic smells too strong, people don’t like that, and you’ll attract unwanted attention. Please brush your teeth immediately after eating – you have school in the morning! A dentist appointment too? Then no kimchi for you today!!
Sometimes other Korean mothers would bring their own fresh kimchi, and it was always more popular with us. But be careful, they use a lot of garlic, also sugar and fish sauce – better not eat too much. Well, no surprise it tastes better than mine…Unfortunately, we didn’t have a separate kimchi fridge as some of the more traditional Korean families did. So during the warmer months, the jars had to go into the regular fridge. The wafting smell of kimchi in it made me develop a keen nose for picking up its scent – whether in yoghurt, milk or my packed lunch. I was embarrassed by my strange smelling lunch package – but even more so by all the other things that made us “different” from my friends. Like the rule to take off the shoes before entering our flat. Or the fact that we didn’t have a “real” TV, but just a small one with black-and-white-screen, the heritage of my German grandmother.  And of course, our food culture: that we waited for each other before common meals and saying a prayer together before starting to eat, that guests were not allowed to leave our house before they had shared one or two meals with us. And all this topped by the influences of the German organic movement: in the first place, food had to be wholesome, fresh and homemade – sugar, white flour and instant products were not to be found – let alone sweets, ketchup or cornflakes. Symbolic for the fusion of worlds we lived in: a clothesline stretched across our living room, with dried seaweed and squid from Korea hanging peacefully alongside bundles of nettles, dandelions and ferns picked from the local neighbourhood community garden. I was as embarrassed by all this as I was by the fear of standing out for slurping or chewing too loudly. I wanted to hide and apologize for our otherness, because our family culture felt so “un-German” to me. I wanted nothing more than to fit in, to belong, to finally be “normal”.

Bibida: At the end, you mix everything well, like with bibimbap. Just like me – a well blended mix where it’s increasingly difficult to taste the individual ingredients in the whole. Just like my mother and, ultimately, my whole family: the result of countless ingredients from different parts of the world, each bringing its own unique, multifaceted flavour. Like any good recipe, developed and passed down through generations.
Although my Korean language skills are far from ideal, I’m grateful that my mother spoke to me in Korean from day one, giving me a slight sense of it as a mother tongue.
I’m also grateful and proud that she named me 소심So-Shim, thus passing on to me her own artist name, which beautifully means “pure soul”. It connects me, through the same initial syllable, to my brother 소송 So-Song, the “little pine tree”, who follows in the footsteps of my grandfather 대송 Dae-Song, the “big pine tree”.
So-Shim, my name, which I had swept under the carpet for so long – and with it, a crucial part of my identity, my roots, my history. The part I’ve only been able to rediscover and unfold through a long process of searching and growing. Nowadays, I introduce myself in certain circles – still somewhat cautiously – with my Korean name, and my heart still skips a little every time someone addresses me as So-Shim. Each time it feels a little less unfamiliar, I know I’m moving closer to a sense of harmony and wholeness.

Kimchi: This method of pickling and fermenting cabbage has been practised on the Korean peninsula for over 2,000 years. Today, the tradition of kimjang – gathering together to prepare kimchi in community – is recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. My first kimjang was inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic. And it was inspired by my mother and brother, who taught me my current kimchi recipe. Much to my delight, my parents soon gave me my own rice cooker, just in time for my late-blooming interest in Korean cuisine. Finally, I could say goodbye to all those years when cooking rice in a simple pot just didn’t work for me – after all, I had grown up in a home with an electric rice cooker. I began to ask my mother for her recipes and to recreate my favourite dishes in vegetarian versions. She taught me how to make ddeuk-guk, japchae, patjuk and bindae-tteok, and told me about the meanings and traditions behind each dish. This sparked conversations between Kyung-Hee and me about topics she had tried to explain or teach me a thousand times during my childhood, but which I had never been open to at the time. We talked, for example, about the background to her family history, about her own life and that of my Halmoni and Harabuji, the grandfather who emigrated to the United States after Halmoni’s death. Some of this has only come back to her memory through my curious questions. It is a valuable and beautiful new relationship that brings us closer together and – even if it’s not always easy – that reconciles us, gives us both strength.

Bubbles in the kimchi jar. After a few days, the filled jars begin to bubble as the fermentation process starts. The jars are then placed in a cooler environment to stop the fermentation. Today, kimchi is a trendy food – widely available, well marketed and popular. Now-fashionable Korea is seen as a prime example of the transformation of so-called “foreign cultures”: K-pop, K-food, K-movies, manga and more now captivate the masses. I can’t believe I’ve only been making kimchi myself for a few winters – years behind friends and acquaintances who have no connection to Korea. Even back then, I was baffled by their proud reports, their adaptations of recipes, their cavalier attitude to the garlic issue and their handling of seemingly impossible ingredients. Perplexed by their praise of how great kimchi is for a vegan diet, or how they now buy it fresh every week from “their” Asian shop. It was hardly flattery for me, few even thought to ask what my association with kimchi was, or what I thought of their newfound passion. Instead, they only fuelled my reluctance to accept their love of kimchi, leaving me feeling caught out and unable to join the conversation despite my Korean roots. That is, until I finally gathered the confidence to make my own kimchi. The bitter aftertaste: hardly any kimchi enthusiasts know the history of this tradition, let alone the history of German-Korean migration. And amidst all the hype, people like my mother – the ones who really are the experts, the cooking teachers – are simply overlooked. They should be the ones telling the stories.

As I enjoy my homemade kimchi, I begin to understand that there were actually a number of indigestibles that had to be cleared away to get to where I am today – a years-long process of fermenting self- and external attributions, contradictory internal and external perceptions. My personal fermentation process took time before I was able to reclaim my own stories and aspects of my identity in a self-determined and appreciative way. It has also sharpened my awareness of how racism operates structurally in society, the fine line between appreciation and appropriation and how all of this has left its mark on our family.
It has been a long journey for me to find the words for this and ultimately to draw from them a formative, healing energy. Energy for activist and political work that allows me to honour the spirit of my ancestors and follow my own path.
What would my Halmoni have said about the fact that, 50 years after her death, kimchi had seen such a boom in Germany? From being skeptically questioned and completely alien to being celebrated as a superfood by a trendy, predominantly white vegan and fermentation scene? When she arrived in this country, hardly anyone ate garlic or chilli, let alone knew how to use chopsticks – how would she feel to know that some of the same people who now rave about all this once crinkled their noses in our kitchen?
It’s been a long road, paved with unacknowledged struggles, suffering and loss on the part of those who provided the ingredients that are now considered a common good.
When I’m asked why I’m not happy about today’s popularity of kimchi, it’s because of this. In such conversations, I can’t help but flinch in anticipation of the dreaded argument that this somehow proves that people of Asian descent aren’t affected by racism. As much as I’d like to feel joy, pride or relief, it’s precisely because of this that I find the kimchi success story so hard to believe. The story behind it is in stark contrast and begins long before the happy ending. It makes me doubt any real redemption from the intertwined stories of exclusion, devaluation, exploitation – and the exploitation that has historically allowed for little equality, then as now.
Behind it is my family’s own kimchi story, which didn’t start only yesterday...

Anna So-Shim Schumacher has an M.A. in Peace & Conflict Studies and a B.A. in Social Sciences. She currently works in anti-racist education and lives in Cologne. With a background of growing up on three continents, Anna So-Shim Schumacher is an activist for anti-discrimination, intersectional justice, peace and human rights in Germany and transnationally. For several years now, community building and empowerment of Asian-diasporic people has been particularly close to her heart. This includes the organisation of the Rice & Roots Asian Diaspora Festival and the first demonstration against anti-Asian racism in Cologne.

Good & Cheap have translated the text into English.

This text was first published in BitingBack. Essen, Diaspora, Widerstand, published by Unrast Verlag by Fallon Tiffany Cabral and Meryem Choukri.