My parents grew up,

you know, at a time in Korea's history that was very, very desperate.

They were torn apart by war.

And there was a great deal of poverty and hunger, quite literal hunger.

And that was certainly so much a part of my parents' childhood.

I don't think it was until they were probably in their 30s where they had anything that resembles food security.

Prior to that, every single day was sort of a struggle to make sure that they could survive with the food that they had.

Chopped here is the glass noodle

And this journey has led me to accepting that and stepping into that.

Well, it's a long journey.

I mean, I think that's another sort of fallacy that has been spun by social media in particular, which is that these journeys happen overnight or no longer than one year.

My journey started probably in 2010. which is when I first started writing creatively.

Obviously, I had done that in college, but after law school, I kind of gave it up.

And then I started doing it in 2010.

I picked up a camera for the first time in my life.

I can only

I would think that another challenge for children of immigrants, particularly when as immigrants, was the case in your family your parents and grandparents survived immense hardship would be an inability on their part to understand how you could willingly give up meat when they went through so much to get to a place where they could have it and and have other luxuries quote unquote luxuries so i feel like i know your family at least a little bit how have they responded to all of this

So that's a really great question.

And that is a struggle for me.

You know, I'm actually doing this video right now.

I've been working on it for a while and I like have had trouble writing it.

And it's this idea that a lot of times, you know, it's, you know, Billie Eilish, she started this really great, I think, conversation about animal activism, animal advocacy, being honest and, you know, confronting privilege, all of those things.

And I actually wrote an essay about it for my newsletter about a month ago because, you know, I had a lot of thoughts about it.

So what would you say are the main challenges in translating Korean cuisine to vegan without losing anything?

Mm-hmm.

Two, three weeks at a time where I was on trial, I couldn't do anything, right? But I think let's do a hobby first.

Because sometimes people know that they're creative and know that they're artistic, but don't actually know how best to manifest that creativity.

Is it, you know, by being a, an artist? Is it by being a photographer? Is it by being a sculptor? Is it by being a cookbook author? They don't know.

They just know that they wanna do something.

Mm-hmm.

So hobby is such a non-committal, non-intimidating way to figure that out about yourself.

How do you feel most fulfilled when it comes to self-expression? And while you're doing that, you're also saving some money, putting some money aside, 'cause that is an integral component to dream-chasing.

Mm-hmm.

This is literally the most basic thing because, you know, that's the most amount of harm that we do as humans when it comes to animals, is just eat different food, right? But I think also The Korean Vegan has always tried to provide an intersectional approach to compassion.

It is why I talk about racism.

It is why I talk about misogyny.

It is why I've talked about the gay community.

It is why I talk about a lot of different things on The Korean Vegan, not just about food, and not just about being Korean, and not just about being vegan.

All of this goes into what I think is an important understanding of the power of compassion.

Uh, but it really is kind of MAHA gone mad i- in my perspective, and I'm wondering where you kind of land on all of this.