Giant jars of kimchi — wild lettuce, stuffed cucumbers, whole cabbages and radishes — lined the path into K Kimchi restaurant in Douglaston, Queens on Saturday. Inside, high school and college students, young professionals and their middle-aged counterparts pulled on latex gloves and rubbed gochugaru paste onto Napa cabbages, preparing kimchi and care packages for survivors of domestic and sexual violence.
The kimchi-making event paired the nonprofit Korean American Family Service Center, or KAFSC, and the professional network Korea Finance Society, or KFS. Though this collaboration was new, KAFSC has long offered support groups and workshops for survivors.
The need has grown sharper this year. Immigrant survivors of gender-based violence are facing heightened fears around food insecurity and immigration status, organizers said, as the Trump administration’s changes to SNAP rules took effect June 1. Because most survivors’ first language is Korean, they have been making more calls to KAFSC’s hotline with questions about food benefits. While some Koreans and Korean Americans buy rather than make kimchi, just a 16 oz jar in New York City often costs around $10 to $12, making it increasingly difficult for some households to afford.
“The food plays a central role in connecting people together — this opens up people’s hearts to talk about their struggles,” said Jeehae Fischer, executive director of KAFSC. “It’s actually part of the healing journey.”
With kimchi, healing is also rooted in comforting memories. Survivors who come through the nonprofit’s doors, Fischer said, start in a high crisis mode before beginning a healing journey that often includes sharing about their homesickness. It’s this concept of chin-jung (친정), translated as “a mother’s home and unconditional love,” that inspired the event.
“While they’re talking about their mom, the first thing that they say is, ‘I miss my mom’s food. I miss her kimchi,’” she said. “Food is essentially love, an expression of love in Korean culture.”
But their basic needs go beyond the tangible, Fischer said: “It’s not just giving them food. It’s really giving them a sense of belonging, but also a sense of community.”
This sense of connection was also felt by volunteers. For Julienne Park, it served two needs she rarely finds in one place. Her family could finally make a staple of Korean cuisine together, and they could do so while helping prepare meals for members of their own community facing food insecurity.
“We have kimchi every day, but we don’t make it at home, and it’s like an art of culture that we don’t really get to do,” said Park, a KAFSC board member.
Making kimchi is a time-consuming process, but one filled with love and tradition. Although it was Park’s third time making kimchi, it was the first for both of her children.
“They’re making friends, because they thought it was going to be a lot of people like mommy,” she said, but were surprised to find other young people to joke around with, alongside more experienced neighbors they could ask about the best way to pack paste into the cabbage.
For Michelle Lee, chair of KAFSC’s board, those ties echo the history of kimchi itself. While it was her first time actually making kimchi, she grew up in South Korea watching extended family members gather for days to prepare batches of it and gossip. She believes food connects generations in ways that don’t require experience.
“Our first memories are of food from our mothers and grandmothers,” Lee said. “It’s very easy and very natural to connect with people when you are physically doing something that you understand.”
That same sense of community inspired Park’s son, Noah, to begin volunteering with KAFSC two years ago. Last year, he created a creative writing program for older Korean women, helping participants write poetry and short stories about their life experiences, relationships, families and the beauty they see in everyday life. One participant wrote about her mom making kimchi cabbage soup, he said, and how she misses the smell in Korea and being able to make kimchi all the time with her mother.
“Stories like that really inspired me,” Noah Park said. “It’s part of the reason why we do stuff like this, to create the community and culture aspect that we always wanted.”
Although he doesn’t speak Korean fluently, he said the stories transcended language: “The art that they create conveys their own personal experiences and their stories and it also is expressing not only their culture but my culture as well.”
As Park prepares to leave for a summer trip to Korea, another young volunteer, Emily Hau, will temporarily lead the writing program. Hau, a high school junior, said she wanted to continue building relationships with older Korean women through writing while also giving back to the community. The kimchi event gave her another opportunity to do that.
Her father, Sandor Hau, a former KAFSC board member and co-president of KFS, volunteered alongside her. Years ago, it was Emily’s grandmother who first taught the family to make kimchi which turned into a ritual among loved ones. “We were doing the kimchi squats” while making it, Hau said, laughing.
That kind of love is felt throughout the process, Lee said, from the kimchi teachers and preparers to the recipients of the KAFSC care packages: “It’s a full circle of shared experience.”
If you or someone you know has been affected by gender-based violence, the Korean American Family Service Center’s 24-hour hotline is available at 718-460-3800 for support and resources.
This article was sponsored and produced in partnership with the Korean American Family Service Center.
