손Sohn-Made Kimchi김치
Jung-a's Mission
Jung-a’s makes the kind of (half-Korean American) kimchi you would eat at home. All batches are sohn 손 (hand)-made with vegetables from local farmers and/or organically grown produce. It’s about reconnecting with our cultural heritage and our ancestors; making food with our own hands with intention & care; sharing food together as a local community, as well as honoring the relationship with nature, our food, and the long lines of hands.
Jung-a's Story
In the heart of the pandemic, Ariel/Jung-a was working with a small group of kids in a learning pod formed by several families. She decided to share with them a little bit about fermentation and her Korean heritage. There's no better way than to make kimchi. It turned out to be a really bad batch. She called her oma (엄마, mom) for some help, who then suggested she talk with her emo (이모, aunt). Emo 이모 said she could make some kimchi jjigae and told her about Maangchi, a sweet and funny Korean lady who shares a lot of K-food recipes on YouTube. Meeting Maangchi filled her with countless recipes she had grown up eating, and sharing them with friends made her belly and soul very happy, helping her to connect more with who she is, her family and where they come from. She made dishes and dishes of various Korean foods, samgyeopsal 삼겹살, bibimbap 비빔밥, mandu guk 만두국, and many more.
She eventually slowed down, but started taking it back up in 2023. Part of this coming back to making kimchi is because of a performance she did called Drip Baby Drip, which pieced together dance, voice, text, sounds and food making. Drip drew from Heena Baek’s children’s book Moon Pops, which re-interprets the Korean folklore about the rabbit(s) in the moon making rice cakes. It’s a story about the moon melting, the rabbits losing their home and then returning again. The moon melts because it is much too hot. The granny wolf runs out to catch the moon's drippings, turns them into moon pops and offers them to her neighbors to help them cool down. Soon, she gets a visit from the rabbits who live in the moon that has just melted away. Granny wolf has a "moon-sprout idea," pouring the last of the moon’s drippings into a pot, from which a primrose starts to grow, and from the flower a light grows bigger and bigger back into the moon. Through the performance, Ariel shared her own moon story, turning fermentation, the process of washing, chopping and salting (the beginning of making kimchi), into a metaphor for becoming her own mother. 달이 떨어진다, daree duruh jeendah, meaning the moon is dripping, is a phrase from the performance that shows up in places here and there in Jung-a's project as a way to continue this message of personal fermentation. Kimchi 김치 has become a kind of mother.
This is a story of someone fermenting into a fermenting obsession, about reconnecting with family roots, about growing in knowing traditional Korean food making, and about sharing that with all of you.

Sohnmat 손맛
Jung-a’s makes everything with her own hands. Telling someone that they have good sohnmat 손맛, “hand-taste,” is one of the highest compliments you can give to someone’s cooking. It means that they have an intuitive, internal knowing of how to make food. They sense and feel their way through cooking. Sohnmat is what makes your food particular to you, to the place where you make the food, and to your family, since it moves from one generation to the next. Often sohnmat is tied to your oma 엄마 (mom)’s cooking. Some say that you can even taste your childhood, your memories, and the love that goes into your omma’s food. When you eat Jung-a’s food, hopefully you can taste the work and the heart that goes into it.
Who drew the hands?

Mayo Osawa drew the hands and the moon, the cabbage mountains, the cabbage flowers (yes those are the flowers that grow from a napa cabbage) and the river.
Mayo grew up in Tokyo, Japan, and now lives in Missoula, MT. She loves cooking, baking, upcycling clothing, painting, making jewelry and whatever is available at hand.
Creating the logo was a collaborative process, with Ariel's floating ideas of the cabbage mountains, the generational hands and the pink moon, and Mayo's compositional strengths, bringing it all together with the clouds, sky and river.
About the kimchi maker



My name is Ariel Sohn Brand. You can also call me Jung-a (정아). Jung-a is the name my wei-halmoeni (할머니, grandma) gave to me. My oma (엄마, mom) is from Seoul, South Korea. My dad was raised in New York City with Hungarian Jewish parents. I was born and raised in the suburbs of Connecticut.
Besides having a minor kimchi obsession, I relish in weird, vulnerable edges, guavas, maracuya and mangos, aikido falls, dancing, usually dancing, unschooled artistry, the ocean, hablando español, Frida, funky grooves, and listening to Rosalia.
Though Korean food is usually passed down generation to generation, I didn’t learn how to make Korean food from my family. Traditionally, it’s the omas 엄마 who have done the cooking at home. My wei-halmoeni 할머니 was a doctor, and so she devoted most of her time to her work. Since their maids were the ones who did most of the cooking, my oma 엄마 never learned how to make Korean food. So I had to learn a different way. It feels as if there’s been a severance in connection to some of our family history, and making kimchi is my way of coming back to it.
I started making Korean food from Maangchi, a v. special Korean lady who shares numerous Korean recipes on Youtube. I owe a lot to her for helping me to get closer to my roots. She is in a way my my Korean food mother 엄마.
And I know I’m not the only one - there are many many stories of her deep influence in our stories of reconnecting with our Korean parts. Since then, I’ve branched out, reading several cookbooks, listening to podcasts, experimenting with different ways to make kimchi, going to Korea with my oma 엄마 and emo 이모 (aunt), eating different kinds of kimchi that I haven’t had in a long time, eating baechu kimchi in different parts of Korea - each place has their own special touch.
Exploring my roots throughout my life has moved as waves do, coming and going. This was the first time I felt that I was connecting more strongly with my Korean-ness and because I can’t speak very much hanguk-eo 한국어 (Korean), making food has been turning into its own language. The more I learn about traditional Korean food making, about fermentation, and about the process of making kimchi, I feel something I can’t really explain in words.
Imagine peeling a full cabbage’s skin, pulling each leaf from the outside to the inside, one by one, getting closer to the center. I like to think of this image as I work to make my sohnmat (손맛) stronger. Sohnmat, meaning "hand-taste," is knowing naturally how to make a dish. It also refers to how the food we cook tastes particular to ourselves, because we’ve made it with our very own hands. Since our microbiomes travel from one generation to the next, so does our sohnmat. Though I really wish we had my haelmonee’s 할머니 way of making kimchi, I wonder if how Jung-a’s kimchi tastes is at all like what she made.
The funny thing is that my middle name/our family name, Sohn (손), means hand. My hands are of my oma’s 엄마 hands, of my haelmonee’s 할머니 hands, of my jungjo haelmonee’s (증조 할머니, great grandma) hands, and a long line of hands, washing, chopping, salting, and mixing.