The fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar is celebrated in various East Asian countries, including both North and South Korea, where it’s known as Chuseok, or Korean Thanksgiving. There, the holiday is observed by visiting one’s hometown, honoring one’s ancestors and expressing gratitude for the autumnal harvest with a bountiful home-cooked meal. Since many Korean Americans grow up without those traditions, however, and might instead mark the day with shrink-wrapped food from H Mart, Yoon Ju Ellie Lee, 37, and Christine Y. Kim, 53 — co-founders of Gyopo, a Los Angeles-based organization that promotes art and culture produced by the Korean diaspora — thought they’d remind their friends of the occasion’s deeper meaning.
As the full moon rose on a Monday in October, eight invitees arrived at Kim’s Craftsman-style house in the city’s Wilshire Vista neighborhood, where they were greeted by rows of taupe-colored slippers. “We’re going full Korean tonight,” Lee joked as people traded their outside footwear for house shoes, which they later carried home as party favors. The guests also took in the art pieces by Korean and Korean American artists (Nam June Paik, Suki Seokyeong Kang) that Kim, a curator-at-large at London’s Tate Modern, had taken from her personal collection and rehung. Before dinner, Emma Kim, 44, of Migaam, an Arts District atelier devoted to Korean objects and delicacies, offered a lesson in hand-shaping yellow, white and green songpyeon (rice cakes), a typical Chuseok sweet. Afterward, she bamboo-steamed the cakes and placed them in boxes made from paulownia wood. Ellen Lee, 49, who owns Nossi Bojagi, a Los Angeles-based company that specializes in Korean textile art, then gift-wrapped each box with double-sided pieces of a silklike fabric typically used for hanbok, or Korean garments.
Gyopo — a term for ethnic Koreans living abroad — got its start in 2017, after a holiday party turned into an impromptu sharing circle, with friends discussing topics like the xenophobic rhetoric of that year’s presidential election and the challenges faced by their undocumented family members. “We realized we have a lot of resources to share,” said Yoon Ju Ellie Lee, who’s also a co-founder of Equitable Vitrines, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit committed to public art, exhibitions and programming. “And also a lot to process.”
Today, Gyopo runs artist talks, film screenings, performances and community conversations — an all-ages workshop to be held at Los Angeles State Historic Park in December will focus on sound art. Just before the Chuseok party, the group hosted its seventh annual benefit, a sold-out fund-raiser in Silver Lake honoring the actor Steven Yeun. “It makes sense that we convene around this time of year,” said Lee. “It’s a major holiday and people are so down to get together.”
The attendees: The artist Anicka Yi, 54, and the Whitney Museum trustee Miyoung Lee, 61, flew in from New York, while the poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong, 49, made the trip from the Bay Area. All of the other guests were local: Mia Locks, 42, an independent curator and the executive director of the arts equity-focused nonprofit Museums Moving Forward; Kibum Kim, 42, a partner at the Koreatown art gallery Commonwealth and Council; Eric Kim, 53, a co-founder of Gyopo and of the conceptual art incubator Human Resources; Carol Lim, 50, a co-founder of the fashion label Opening Ceremony; and Ann Soh Woods, 50, the founder of the Japanese rice whiskey brand Kikori.
The table: Guests sat at an asymmetrical oval maple dining table by the Brooklyn-based furniture designer Hans Accola. “There’s no head,” Christine Y. Kim pointed out. “I really appreciate not having a hierarchy.” The lightly-speckled ivory earthenware soup plates were made by Neobunjae, a family-run studio in Icheon Ceramics Village, southeast of Seoul, and the chopsticks came from Joseon Sangjeom, an online retailer of Korean gifts. There were also vases by Leah Panlilio, Heath Ceramics and Adam Silverman, which had been filled with cosmos, fennel, zinnias and galax leaves by Megan AuYeung of the Los Angeles floral design studio MOONFLORALS.
The food: The chefs Kwang Uh and Mina Park of Baroo, a modern Korean restaurant in the Arts District, gave daegu jorim — soy-braised black cod — a twist by serving it with a coconut-lemongrass buttermilk sauce, and paired their grilled kalbi (short rib) with wild greens and rice. A buckwheat noodle dish highlighted gamtae, a delicate seaweed imported from Korea and “only available from the coldest and purest waters,” said Park, while a grilled and marinated lotus root with fermented tofu sauce was served alongside pine mushrooms. For dessert, guests unwrapped the sweet rice cakes they’d made earlier in the evening.
The drinks: Cocktail hour featured two drinks created by the bartender Ash Miyasaki and made with Kikori Whiskey: the Harvest Moon contained cinnamon and was garnished with dried persimmon, pine needles and luster-dusted pine nuts, while the Chuseok Chiller had gochujang honey, kimchi brine and green chile. For dinner, Eric Kim provided bottles of a 2024 chardonnay from Moon Jar Wines, made with grapes grown on his family’s 3,500-acre vineyard in Arroyo Grande, on California’s Central Coast.
The music: Guests arrived to songs from Kendrick Lamar’s album “DAMN.” (2017), but during dinner Christine Y. Kim switched to jazz and South Asian devotional music with Ganavya’s 2024 album “Daughter of a Temple,” a homage to Alice Coltrane. Toward the end of the night, as a few lingering guests sat around the table smoking cigarettes, she put on Duke Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood.”
The conversation: The group reflected on the challenges of maintaining cultural traditions, with several parents mentioning that, until recently, their children had been totally unfamiliar with Chuseok. “For so long, Korean identity was a secondary thing,” said Lim. Now, she noted, with many aspects of Korean culture — from pop music to skin care — increasingly glorified in the United States, “we can celebrate all the things we grew up with that maybe we didn’t have the space to.” Her newest project, MoMo Camp, is a summer program in Seoul where Korean American kids can participate in dance classes, artist studio visits and a field trip to CJ Entertainment, which helped launch K-pop to the world. Yi talked about her own camp experience last summer, at Chozen-ji Zen temple in Hawaii, where she underwent rigorous training in martial arts, boxing and long-sitting eyes-open meditation.
An Entertaining Tip: Kim frequently hosts long, lazy dinners and encourages her guests to “get up, move around and switch seats” mid-meal. She added that her shoes-off, slippers-on policy is not only in keeping with her culture’s customs but lets friends know that they can relax — as if, she said, “they’re in their own home.”
The post When Chuseok Means a Full Moon and Handmade Rice Cakes appeared first on New York Times.
