A Korean American’s Love Letter to Her Mother, Grandmother and the Meals They Made

Over winter break, Yunji Yun (C'26) asked her mom to make a beloved childhood dish: sausage ketchup stir fry.

Her mom used to cook the stir fry in the months after they arrived in the U.S. from South Korea. Yun was 11 years old at the time, spoke no English and was hungry for a taste of home.

Ten years later, Yun's mother made the dish exactly the way she remembered: Korean sausage and vegetables slathered in Korean ketchup and oyster sauce, served beside a lump of rice and egg curry.

"Despite our ups and downs, my mom's hands remember me, what foods I like and how to make me feel 11 again, washing away homesickness and leaving me only with that feeling of comfort and home," Yun wrote.

For Yun's senior thesis, she created a 76-page food magazine, hand-painting the cover.

The recipe for sausage ketchup stir fry appears in Yun's senior thesis, which isn't a typical senior thesis but a 76-page food magazine that unpacks how Korean cookbooks illustrate the diversity of Korean American identity.

As part of her American Studies major, Yun spent nearly a year chronicling the rise of Korean food in the U.S. by poring through cookbooks, analyzing stories and recipes, and writing and designing the magazine. She even painted the cover, which, modeled after Bon Appétit magazine, features a bottle of American-made kimchi.

Woven throughout are Yun's own stories of food and family: her grandmother's juk, or porridge, and tupperwares of kimchi in the fridge, the milk bread and cucumber salad she and her mother made in their apartment during COVID-19, the focaccia kimchi she perfected in her own Georgetown apartment.

The process helped Yun understand her own Korean American identity - and gave her a deeper understanding of her grandmother and mother through their view of food.

"Food is the love language of our family," she said. "Even growing up with my grandma, we would argue about something, and she would bring me food or fruits. Every family gathering revolves around food, and my mom and I's way of showing love is also through food."

Food as Love

Breakfast at Yun's grandmother's apartment in Yesan, South Korea, in December 2025.

Yun grew up in her grandmother's apartment in Deokjeong, South Korea, just north of Seoul. When she was in third grade, she and her mother moved to Washington state.

Yun's mother Misun Lee worked as a server and often brought home ingredients from the restaurants to cook with.

"We had a lot of free food we'd incorporate to make something new," Yun said. "She really got into Tabasco for a while, so we were just putting that everywhere. She was really into cilantro for a while, too."

Her memories of where her mom worked and what she brought home are tied directly to where they lived: Texas, back to Washington, then Sacramento, California.

Years later, when COVID-19 hit, Yun and her mother spent more time together at home. And they began to cook. They remade dishes from Yun's childhood and experimented with milk breads, Dalgona coffee and kimchi.

"We had what I like to call a very telepathic connection," Yun said. "We'd look at each other, and we'd cook food together. We knew what we were thinking before we had to even say anything. We knew so much about each other, and it made sense that we worked so well together cooking because of everything that led up to it. I think that's the closest we were right before I came to college."

Arriving at Georgetown, Yun began to notice that many of the Korean foods she grew up with - food she was made fun of for during school lunches - were now appearing on the menus of local restaurants.

Understanding Korean American Food

For her thesis, Yun wanted to find out how Korean food fits into American culture. And what did that mean for her and her own family's homemade Korean food?

The cookbooks she studied were filled with family history, fusion foods, Korean foods and American foods with Korean backstories, representing different interpretations of what it meant to be Korean American, she said.

"There wasn't a lot of research about the modern Korean food that was emerging," she said. "And there was no study of modern ethnic cookbooks that arose in the U.S. So it felt like such a personal project, yet I was contributing to the general food studies landscape."

Yun filled her magazine with her own family recipes, too - just with her own twists.

"I think it contextualizes a lot of my cooking because I'm inspired by my mom and grandma in what I cook. So it's connecting the layer of generational food stories," she said.

During her thesis project - amidst chairing the Performing Arts Advisory Council, serving as vice president for the Georgetown Pep Band and working the front desk at the Georgetown Scholars Program - Yun realized a career in food is right where she belongs.

She graduates this May and plans to pursue a career in food studies or at a food magazine. She'll work at another restaurant first to gain firsthand knowledge and experience.

In the meantime, she's still cooking, finding her own pace, flavors and spin on the family recipes she loves.

For the full recipe for sausage ketchup stir fry, visit Yun's food magazine.