Gimbab: Wrapped in LoveLEE Yoon Ju (Korea)
Have you ever heard of the Korean dish gimbab? Gim is dried laver seaweed andbab is steamed white rice. Gimbab is a Korean dish made of cooked rice and various
ingredients wrapped in a sheet of dried laver seaweed. Although it is a simple dish, it isa mainstay for Koreans when they take part in outdoor events, and as a people, they
have a deep affection for this dish.
In Korea, October is the best season for school excursions. When children join aschool excursion, almost all their mothers prepare gimbab for their lunch. Gimbab isalmost always prepared for other occasions as well, such as sports festivals, gatheringsof men and women of all ages, and outdoor events. Its prevalence at social functions has
made the Korean people deeply attached to gimbab.

Gimbab is cooked as follows:1.

Cook soft rice and spread it thinly all over a sheet of laver seaweed.

2.

Place yellow pickled radish, ham, and your family’s favorite vegetables tidily on
one of the side edges of the spread rice, and roll it.

3.

Cut the roll into bite-size slices, and it’s finished!

Gimbab is nutritionally perfect. A slice of gimbab looks like a work of art; in thebeautiful frame of black seaweed sheets and white rice are a wide variety of vegetables,
presenting a superb harmony of colors. Of course, the dish is pleasing not only to the eye
but also the palate. Considering that a home-cooked Korean meal usually consists ofrice and a wide variety of dishes accompanying the rice, it is not an exaggeration to saythat the essence of Korean dishes is condensed into gimbab.
A school excursion to an aircraft exhibition was organized by a kindergarten at
which I worked. One of the students at the kindergarten, a six-year boy, was from amulticultural family, and his mother is not Korean. His parents are now divorced, so helives with his grandmother. On the day of the excursion, I saw that his bag was so full offood that it was almost about to split. He carried not only his own lunch but also food forhis classmates and teachers. It seemed that it had not been prepared as lunch for him toeat on the day of the excursion. It seemed to be just a collection of the snacks that heusually eats and beverages that he usually drinks during breaks from helping hisgrandmother with agricultural work.
Even though he had sufficient food in his bag, he did not look happy. I asked him,

“What’s wrong? We were able to take a train. Isn’t this fun?” He replied, “It’s fun. But I
don’t have any gimbab.”Presumably, his grandmother was busy doing agricultural work in a rural area andhad some health problems that prevented her from preparing his lunch. Additionally,
although there are gimbab shops almost everywhere in urban areas in this country,
there is no such a shop near his rural home. He was unhappy, and looked like a deflated
balloon. When I told him I would share my gimbab with him, his entire face lit up.
At lunch time, all the students and teachers sat together in a circle, and thatstudent sat beside me. When each of us took out our lunch from our bags, a teacher who
was 10 years older than me gave him a small lunch box with food that she had preparedfor him. Knowledgeable about his family situation beforehand, the teacher had
prepared a lunch of gimbab for him. I think that receiving lunch that had been preparedexclusively for him must have made the student keenly aware of his own existence andmade him feel that he was highly respected as a person to be loved.
There is no other food like gimbab, filled with the loving care of mothers or othercare-givers. While mothers exercise ingenuity in selecting ingredients and arranging
them to form beautiful patterns, children exchange their own gimbab and boast to eachother about how good their mothers are at cooking.
There are many painful incidents covered by the media on a daily basis, and there
are no distinct solutions presented. I believe that the first thing to do in such a painfulsituation is to fill children with precious and unforgettable memories. Moreover, I feelthat mothers, as well as every adult, should do their best to ensure that children canfeel that their world is full of warmth. Words alone are not enough.