Anxiety and kimbap

anxiety [noun]

A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome.

An abnormal and overwhelming sense of apprehension and fear often marked by physical signs (such as tension, sweating, and increased pulse rate), by doubt concerning the reality and nature of the threat, and by self-doubt about one’s capacity to cope with it.

kimbap [noun] (Korean Cooking) 김밥; lit. kim rice; IPA: [kim.p͈ap̚]

Steamed short-grain rice seasoned with sesame oil, cooled, and rolled in a seaweed wrapper with vegetables and other cooked ingredients, such as thin slices of sautéed beef, scrambled egg, canned tuna, or crabmeat, creating a cylinder-shaped roll that is sliced into bite-size pieces.

When it comes to national dishes—foods that define a nation not only in their component parts but in the way they capture a country’s (a people’s) collective identity—it’s hard to find a better example than South Korea. Although every country has its own defining food, there is something about the decisive, frugal and multifaceted nature of Korean cooking that sets it apart, not least because food sharing is such a huge part of people’s lives here. 

What is the national dish of Korea? It’s hard to choose just one, and most online travel guides will usually list around twenty or more. Kimchi would be more than a good start given its ubiquity on the Korean dining table. Or maybe bibimbap? These two are generally the ones people know of before arriving in Korea, anyway. Barbecue or fried chicken? A little too contemporary, perhaps. For reasons which will be made clearer (if they’re not already), let’s just say that it’s this: kimbap.

So, what does this innocuous cylinder of rice, meat, and vegetables wrapped in kim—crispy seaweed laver—and sold for next to nothing across the Korean peninsula have to do with anxiety? Well, depending on who you ask, nothing and everything.  

Like a lot of people, Jamila Benson, 33, first came to South Korea to teach English; unlike a lot of people, her interest in Korean culture stemmed from indie rock bands and horror movies. Films like Bloody Reunion—Im Dae-wong’s 2006 directorial debut about a detective investigating a mass murder and a school reunion gone horribly awry—or A Tale of Two Sisters, inspired by a Joseon Dynasty folktale about an escaped mental patient, the first Korean horror to be screened in the US and still the highest grossing.

Although she might do a double-take at being called so (more on that later) Jamila is an illustrator, and Anxiety and Kimbap is her brand. She turns her illustrations into colorful, humorous, and often satirical depictions of Korean culture, selling them mainly as pin badges but also as key chains, stickers, and more recently as t-shirts and posters. Sat in a Starbucks in Bucheon (a satellite city west of Seoul) with the aircon turned up inordinately high for early June, Epilogue_Korea spoke to Jamila about her work, inspirations, and just why did she choose that name?

part I: proud of what?

It was upon returning home to Birmingham, Alabama, in 2018 for the first time in several years that it first hit Jamila: 

“I went back and I saw my family, and especially my one uncle (everyone has their favorite relative, right?) and when I saw him he was like: I’m so proud of you and everything you’ve done, you’ve graduated and moved overseas, you’re doing so well for yourself. And I was like: thank you. But it just sat with me for the rest of my trip: what is he proud of?”

To the average person this might seem unfair, even a little cynical—afterall, moving to a new country and effectively starting a new life is no small thing, especially somewhere as far removed as South Korea. But to anyone who has spent any amount of time teaching English as a second language in Korea (or perhaps anywhere in the world), it’s a statement which pierces the very fabric of one’s existence when doing so: am I proud of this? There’s a lot to be gained from teaching ESL, sure, but there’s also a lot to lose, and in South Korea that generally means a healthy work-life balance, freedom to experiment in the classroom, and a nurturing work culture. 

“I felt like a fraud. I kept thinking about those lines, ‘I’m so proud of you’. I was just teaching—barely teaching—kids in Korea, y’know. It felt like nothing. And in the midst of that I started to get these really weird symptoms; I got insomnia so I couldn’t sleep, and when I did I would jolt awake with my heart pounding so badly I thought I was having a heart attack.” 

Hypnopompic struggles mingled with more physical symptoms: out of nowhere Jamila’s jaw had become extremely tight, resulting in a misalignment, and she had also developed tinnitus. 

“I couldn’t sleep, racing, random heart beats during the day, and now my jaw’s effed-up and I have ringing in my ears, I was going crazy and while I was going crazy I would still hear: I’m so proud of you, I’m so proud of you.“

She throws her arms up in the air in a flurried mix of exasperation and hysteria: “proud of what? I’m falling apart right now!”

Although she can clearly see the funny side now, at that time it was a genuine problem and it wasn’t until her orthodontist (of all people) recommended she see a psychiatrist that things started to fall into place.  

“At first I was like: that’s so weird, why would I do that? What’s weirder is my degree is in psychology and I didn’t think about any of that [wry laugh]. But I took his advice (he’d been honest with me thus far) and so I went and I found this psychiatrist in Seoul and I talked with them and towards the end of that conversation they were like: yeah, that sounds like symptoms of anxiety.”

Anxiety, although generally considered to be psychological in nature, is inherently physical: stomach pain, headaches, insomnia (check), weakness or fatigue, rapid breathing / shortness of breath (check), pounding heart (check), sweating, muscle tension or pain (check). The psychiatrist asked her what she was worried about. Jamila said that she didn’t know, but in the back of her mind she could hear that same old line: I’m so proud of you.

“I was diagnosed with clinical depression state-side, but I was like, anxiety? Anxiety can cause a lot of stuff.” This, it seems, is an understatement. Feeling overwhelmed—uncertainty about the future, the prospect of coming to the end of a contract she didn’t want to renew, her family being proud of her for something which in her mind wasn’t justified—she decided to think about something else.

“I just thought: let’s draw something. Let’s make something… What can you make?”

Jamila turned to something that she knew and loved: pins. As an avid collector for a long time, and dissatisfied with what she was finding in Korea (“all the pins sucked”) her focus was now on making pins and not, say, “having a heart attack every few minutes”.

In a flurry of action spurred by what was perhaps an existential crisis of sorts, Jamila bought a tablet and stylus, watched some YouTube tutorials and set to work. She didn’t know what she was doing, but she knew she had to do it. One problem: she didn’t have a name yet.

“I didn’t want anything cheesy. Everyone has something to do with Seoul, or something to do with kimchi, or some pun… I didn’t want something like that.”

In the end a name was presented to her in the form of perhaps Korea’s most beloved of fast food snacks—kimbap. In an unemployed, depressed, and anxious state, one usually doesn’t want to cook, ordering take-out or delivery too expensive. The next best thing? 

It’s at this point a word on Korean convenience store—or pyeonijeom—culture must be put forward. Mostly open 24 hours a day, these glowing suburban oases are a bastion of everyday items, cheap food, and alcohol (all of which can be prepared and eaten or drunk on the premises). Instant ramen, fish cakes, instant tteokbokki (rice cakes in spicy sauce), hot dogs, bread, boiled eggs, instant pasta, baked sweet potatoes, fried chicken, ice-cream, nuts, chips, soda, soju, makgeoli (rice wine), beer, coffee, milk… kimbap. One can start, finish or indeed spend an entire night haunting a local 7-Eleven, GS25, or CU and barely sweat $15 (depending on what you’re buying).

“One day I was at mine, chatting with my friend, and I looked over at my kitchen and… kimbap wrappers just overflowing in the trash. Eughh, maybe I should do something about that? And then it hit me—anxiety and kimbap.”  

© Jamila Benson, 2023

Part II: Anxiety and Kimbap

What Anxiety and Kimbap is now is a combination of Jamila’s favorite fandoms combined with the little things that make Korea what it is. Most people’s idea of what that is exactly, it’s fair to say, would probably be mega-corporations like Samsung, LG, Kia, and Hyundae; global pop stars like BTS and Blackpink; Korean barbecue and kimchi. 

“It’s the little things, like one of my sticker designs of the red stools you always see outside the bars and restaurants here that people sit on to eat and drink. People who’ve been to Korea and have seen that and have experienced that might want to take that home with them. Like: my butt’s numb but I’m having the time of my life out here you know… trying not to fall off because I’m so drunk…”

These are the things that, as guests to the country perhaps, we notice more than Koreans—when you’ve lived somewhere all your life, do you pay much attention to the type of seating at restaurants? 

Korea, if it’s full of anything, is full of visual quirks, objects, and iconography, the specificity of which are instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent time here and which you can find in just about any town, city, and neighborhood. The multicolored market parasols and make-shift tables; the temples and pergolas (their shapes, colors, and patterns); hair rollers and Crocs; the plastic chairs and stools and the certain types of bowls and cutlery used in restaurants; the bus stop and metro signage, the buses and metros themselves; the shape of soju bottles, the shape of milk cartons; wooden chopsticks and metal soup spoons; the yellow hagwon (academy) buses; the snacks, toys, games, arcades and karaoke rooms; Spam; the clapped out Hyundae pick-ups and death-wish delivery riders; the garish fake flower garlands put outside of every newly opened store; potato on pizza; the guy standing on the edge of a dubious construction site in the middle of the road futilely yet diligently waving on passers by with a little glowing red stick.

All (or nearly all, anyway) are captured in Jamila’s work.

“Koreans maybe think that foreigners want this [BTS, Blackpink, BBQ] but we also want this [milk cartons, stools, disposable chopsticks] too. It can be both things. That’s where I come in and fill the gap with those things. It’s funny! It’s meant to be funny. I was laughing when I thought of it, I was laughing when I was designing it… laugh at it because it’s meant to be funny, that’s why it exists.”

That being said, Anxiety and Kimbap is not about laughing at Korean culture, but with the things that make it so specific and, ultimately, loveable (or at the very least relatable). And it’s not just for people who are living, or who have lived, in South Korea either. Jamila ships back to the US, Canada, Europe and to Australia. Some things customers have seen in entertainment and they want it—Jamila points out a recently popular pin that depicts a spilt jam jar and the Hangul characters 노잼 (pronounced “no-jem”), a slang term meaning a not fun or boring person.  

“That became really popular for a while because some K-pop idol said something about no-jems. So some stuff they’ve seen or heard in entertainment and they want it, or they used to live here and they think oh my god that reminds me of this, I’ve gotta have it.”

If there’s one thing Korea loves, it’s a character. They’re everywhere you go, from adverts and brand collaborations to public service announcements; mostly anthropomorphised animals and vehicles adorably telling you all the different ways in which you can be penalized financially or even incarcerated for breaking prohibition rules on public transportation—cute! Some famous examples include Jett the transformable plane; Ryan the bear from Kakao Friends (emojis taken from Korea’s ubiquitous messaging platform KakaoTalk meets animated TV show?); and Pororo the penguin (and friends); characters repeat ad nauseum. 

Many of these characters have their own TV shows, branded food (Pororo, for example, has a very famous drink) etc., but also pop up just about anywhere you’d least expect to see them. 

“If you go to the convenience store [to get food] there’s some character there with it. Like, I want that for my little kimbap! Like, why is it green and anxious? Oh ‘cause you’re about to eat it! That’s why, because it’s nervous—it tastes good but it doesn’t wanna die!”

The kimbap in question is Wonnie, so-named because A) a reference to a “one” kimbap and B) a disastrous ex-student of Jamila’s. 

“But he was cute and if he did something wrong he would just look at me with those eyes and I would just be like: oh Wonnie…“

Wonnie is the personification (anthropomorphisation? metaphorical manifestation?) of Anxiety and Kimbaps entire oeuvre. Even though kimbap is usually black-ish in hue, Wonnie is green, mainly due to artistic reasons (black illustrations lose detail) but it also sets him apart from all the other kimbaps in Korea.

“He’s very anxious about it. All the other kimbaps tease him about it. Like your green, you’re weird.”

Jamila shows us some examples of illustrations including Wonnie and other kimbaps, NPCs, if you will—Wonnie sitting on the Metro with two free seats either side of him, all other seats filled, other kimbaps choosing to stand instead of sitting next to him (see: alienation). Or doom scrolling on the subway, someone—another kimbap—looking over their shoulder at the screen because what else is there to do? (see: personal space). Or Wonnie disconsolately standing in front of a Valentine’s Day display, gloriously lit and radiating with chocolate hearts, roses and cards (see: loneliness).

photo credit: Samuel Moore, 2023

© Jamila Benson, 2023

Part III: Sustenance and Inspiration

The humble kimbap is indicative of many things. Korea’s culture of convenience, for one—out of all the foods to choose, kimbap is by far the best overall deal in terms of its speed, convenience, satiability, portability, and cost. 

It also holds an interesting place in Korean history, its origins hotly debated. Some believe it was brought over by Japan during their colonial occupation of the Korean peninsula in the form of makizushi (a particularly ignorant expat I met once referred to kimbap as “poor man’s sushi”). 

An alternative theory (and one which most Koreans would understandably prefer) is that it came from the long-standing tradition of rolling bap (cooked rice) and banchan (side dishes) inside kim (crispy seaweed sheets). Yeoryang Sesigi (열양세시기), a Joseon Dynasty book written in 1819 by Kim Mae-sun (김매순), refers to cooked rice and filling rolled with kim as bokssam (복쌈).    

Whether it’s a long-standing tradition or a remnant of Korea’s colonial past doesn’t detract from how purely Korean kimbap is. If its origins were in the Joseon Dynasty, it’s a heritage food. If its origins were from Japan, it’s a food of the people, for the people, by the people. Kimbap is unashamedly not a picture-perfect display of gastronomy; no dainty pieces of sliced raw fish and thimble drops of wasabi and soy; it’s seasoned with sesame oil, not rice vinegar; it sells for about $1-2 a roll and used to cost a whole hell of a lot less.

For Jamila—at a time when she was struggling to find the energy to eat—kimbap was her sustenance and, ultimately, her inspiration. 

Circling back to the start of our conversation—Jamila’s notions of fraudulency, of feeling like she could never finish anything that she started—I put it to her again. Does she feel differently now?

“Anxiety and Kimap has grown so much, from people not believing in it, to people wanting to work or collab with me. It’s a little bit weird, and there’s still a little bit of imposter syndrome, where people see me as something I don’t feel yet. When people see me and my work and recognize it, it freaks me the hell out. Like, you’re talking to me? Me? I just cried because my cheese stick just fell on the floor. Not me.” 

Jamila’s groundedness aside, there’s something that comes from living abroad, something a lot of people can perhaps relate to. It is the opportunity to reinvent oneself. Being apart from family and old friends is hard, but it has the bizarre effect of freeing up a remarkable amount of time and mental energy to pursue one’s goals. There’s no judgment (positive or negative), no obligations, and no possibility of your second cousin’s brother’s wedding getting in the way. And in a city as objectively diverse and full of inspiration as Seoul, anything seems possible. 

 

E_K
Words and photographs by Samuel Moore