South Korea priest feeds hungry youth with kimchi stew

CNA Staff, Feb 1, 2025 / 05:30 am (CNA).

A priest in South Korea is serving up bowls of rich Korean stew in Seoul via a restaurant ministry as a means to fight youth hunger in the nation’s capital.

Father Gabriel Lee Mun-su launched Youth Mungan “out of a desire to help young people in need,” Claretian Ministries says on its website.

The restaurant serves “a single, affordable meal to all young people,” namely a bowl of jjigae, a traditional Korean stew. The meals are given to customers “regardless of their financial situation, with no standards attached.”

Jjigae is ubiquitous throughout much of South Korea, with various forms of the recipe being found in historical records starting at least several hundred years ago.

The stew has been adapted to many different recipes, though a popular version in both Korea and increasingly in the West incorporates kimchi, the country’s staple fermented cabbage dish.

Often seasoned with copious amounts of spicy peppers along with garlic and ginger, kimchi’s popularity has spread from Korea in recent years and is regularly found in grocery stores and restaurants around the world.

‘The value of money truly depends on how it’s used’

Lee told the Korea Herald this month that he was inspired to launch Youth Mungan in part after hearing a report of a young man dying alone of starvation in a “gosiwon,” or a cramped private dorm. 

The priest said a nun’s remark about an affordable restaurant for young people stuck with him and that the Claretian congregation helped him to develop the idea as well.

The restaurant charges about 3,000 won for a bowl of kimchi — the equivalent of about $2 in the United States. The priest told the Herald that, when he first opened the shop, it was losing “about 1 million won a month.” The priest attempted to cover the gap with lectures and donations, though the venture “did not look like a sustainable business model.” 

An appearance on the South Korean variety show “You Quiz on the Block,” however, led to major exposure for the restaurant and a “massive” response including donations of kimchi and other ingredients. 

The donations, Lee said, brought in “too much money to run just one restaurant,” leading the priest to open multiple locations. Youth Mungan now includes five storefronts around the city. 

The priest told the Herald of one instance where a woman bought her bowl of jjigae and proceeded to pay for everyone else’s bowl as well, a cost of about 100,000 won. 

“It made me realize that the value of money truly depends on how it’s used,” he said.

The restaurant offers another ministry in the form of hiring workers with “borderline intellectual functioning,” according to the Herald. Lee told the paper that the restaurant’s simple menu helps those workers acclimate to the job. 

On its website, Claretian Ministries says Youth Mungan offers a variety of other ministries for young people to participate in including “distributing briquettes in winter to the elderly.”

In a 2021 talk, meanwhile, Lee said he regularly meets “a lot of beautiful young people” in the course of his ministries. 

They’re beautiful, the priest said, in part because they “gladly share their talents for the happiness of others.”

Such people, he said, made him realize he could be happy “by living a life of sharing my talents, time, or materials with someone that needs it.”

Source: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/261861/south-korea-priest-feeds-hungry-youth-with-kimchi-stew