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108 maconmagazine.com | April/May 2024 them, and I can still make healthy, tasty food." Her metropolitan childhood home of Gwanju rests at the base of Mount Mudeung. From its peak on a clear day, you can see the islands of Jeju and Geojedo in the Yellow Sea to the west, two of the nearly 2,000 sparsely-populated islands that dot the coastline. To the east, the densely forested Mudeung-san region of the Sobaek mountain range creates countless microclimates, resulting in a rich biodiversity of plant and animal species, before falling away to the lowlands. The variety of foods – seafood on the coast, rare mountain herbs, wild rabbits in the foothills, freshwater fish in the streams – led to profound culinary diversity. The shallow, rocky soil and harsh climate (hot, stormy summers and freezing, dry winters) leads to food scarcity in winter, driving a need for food preservation – and so, a thousand, thousand kimchi variations were born. And Miyang grew up tasting it all. "Most people in Gwanju, they know how to cook. And there are as many ways to make kimchi as there are people – more than that. Every family made five or six kinds of kimchi every November. The people on the coast used lots of seafood. We were closer to the mountains, so my brothers hunted and fished in the streams. I loved when they came home with ducks." Her family preserved that game and vegetables In Korea, she felt her only option was marriage, and she wasn't ready to marry. So, at 27, she came to the States to see what her life might become. LEFT Miyang and her mother, Poksun Na, on one of Miyang's visits home. Photo courtesy of Miyang. like cabbage and radishes as kimchi, using the traditional method of clay pots buried in the earth to regulate the temperature and airflow, resulting in a fermentation that could preserve foods for three or four years – in some cases, much longer. "Kimchi is like wine or cheese," Miyang said. "Its flavor grows with age." While she hasn't found a Central Georgia location with the right temperature and humidity for those complex kimchi types yet, she imagines a future with a vast cave in Georgia holding these clay kimchi jars, which she can export back to Korea, whose rapid industrialization is leading to a loss of these heritage foodways, Miyang opined. IMMIGRATING, MOTHERHOOD, AND THE ROAD TO MACON But in her early twenties, she couldn't envision her future. In Korea, she felt her only option was marriage, and she wasn't ready to marry. So, at 27, she came to the States to see what her life might become. Three months after immigrating in 1997, a hit-and- run car wreck nearly killed her in Mississippi. Nursing an emergency hip replacement and restructured pelvic bone, she sought community in Atlanta, where she was welcomed into a tight-knit Korean Christian fellowship. Shortly after, she entered her first marriage, and over the next 15 years, she had five daughters: Charmaine, Pillju (Joyce), Seungju (Sunny), Heaju (Grace), and Yeju (Esther). Miyang described this period of her life as "a lot of tears, a very hard time," due to an uneasy marriage, homesickness, and the physical toll of five pregnancies and births with a pelvis that had been cracked in half. Yet, it was also a time of great joy and inspiration. "Each of my daughters, she is a miracle," said Miyang. "All my life, I was the only girl. I had all brothers, remember? With each baby, I felt such joy, like Jesus had saved up daughters for me." She prayed most during her pregnancies, she said, asking Jesus for health and a vision for a life that would bring them all joy. As many of the countless hours as Miyang spent praying, she also spent recreating the flavors of home, cooking in her church fellowship hall and at the Kia factory in West Point, Georgia, where she worked in the cafeteria. "I spent so much time learning and making the kimchi, and people started to really like it and to ask for it. Over the years, I started to ask myself, 'What is the difference between other kimchi and mine?'" she recalled. The answer is clear, she believes. "It's that I'm so happy when I make it. I'm never so happy as when I am making food and sharing hospitality with another person. It doesn't matter whether I have money or not."