Monthly Toefl Essay #1 : The Origin of mutual help, kimjang

 There is no doubt that Kimchi is the most well-known food to foreign people among the many other traditional Korean foods. However, compared to Kimchi, kimjang culture is unknown to foreigners. Generally, Korean defined kimjang as the progress of making kimchi in winter with neighborhoods, relatives, and friends. In our traditional society, through kimjang culture, people developed their own relationship. And I think it is very meaningful because, the kimjang culture has played a significant role of forming unique relationships, such as doorae or pumashi. Since, I have heard that foreign society is overflowing with individualism; I would like people from other countries to adopt kimjang culture or kimjang custom which is very helpful for their society.

 Firstly, kimjang culture helps people become more familiar with each other. When the winter comes in Korea, many people prepare for kimjang. This period is called as ‘kimjang season’. Even though, one house makes Kimchi for one day, we called it as ‘Kimjang season’. This is because of the characteristics of Kimjang culture. The one who makes Kimchi will be helped by the neighborhoods or friends on the kimjang day. Then, if the neighborhoods or friends’ kimjang day comes, the one who got helped is supposed to go their homes and help them make kimchi. This is why we called it as kimjang season not kimjang day. Through this kind of helping each other, many people can make Kimchi more easily and efficiently. And this custom help people in korea forge a bond and become more familiar with neighborhoods. If the foreign countries which have Thanksgiving Day or such day like it, adopt this mutual help, Individualism, at least, can alleviate.

 Also, it is very good for the education of their children. Children naturally see their parents and neighborhoods helping each other in the Kimjang seasons. Through this direct experiment, children can learn a spirit of mutual help. When they grow up, this kind of experiment helps them adapt in the society. Indeed, there is thesis that researched about the kimjang culture’s influence to children. In this research, the researcher found that people who grow up with seeing their parent’s kimjang do better in the society than the people grow up without seeing it. This research also found that the people who grow up seeing kimjang make much better results when they do group work. These results show us that kimjang culture can change the world where the extreme individualism is prevalent.

 However, unfortunately, the media has just made issue of the flavor of Kimchi, or the way to make Kimchi. It is very true that we did not regard the kimjang culture as the important factor of our culture. However, as I mentioned in the prior 2 paragraphs, there are many advantages of kimjang culture not only for the foreign country but also our country. So we have to be proud of our kimjang custom. To conclude, I insist we not only keep our kimjang culture as long as possible, but also try to make foreign countries adopt our good custom.