Sonya and Hannah Sung Snorkeling in Kelp Forest. Photo credit: Our Ocean Table
Sonya Lee on the Climate Crisis Through a Lens of Food and Culture, Ethical Ocean Storytelling, and Mobilizing as a Nation
Interview by Harriet Kim
When Sonya and I were talking in preparation for this interview, she asked what drew me to the ocean as someone who did not really grow up near the ocean or the culture of coastal life. To be honest, I am not entirely sure. Maybe I just loved the ocean more than I understood, or maybe it is just part of who I am, ingrained in my body and passed on from my ancestors. Whatever my reason, this interview felt like a full-circle moment—for choa, as we reflect on our first volume about water, and for myself, as someone who went into that volume and this platform obsessed with thinking and talking about water (and our oceans by extension) with other Korean folks. As a marine biologist and ocean communicator, Sonya has a wealth of knowledge and talent, including audio production. We were lucky to catch her in person during a short trip to the traditional lands of T’karonto (colonially Toronto).
Transcript
Harriet: Thank you for joining us for choa. For people who are joining us via video, you’ll notice that Sonya is wearing some headphones. Behind the scenes, before we started this interview, she was kind of our tech extraordinaire, so thank you so much for helping me set that up. But yeah, welcome to choa. Thank you for joining us.
Sonya: Oh, no problem. I might look like a dork, but the audio quality will be better.
Harriet: Yeah, and we're so thankful for it. But yeah, every interview that we do, we always start with asking the person to introduce themselves in the way that they like to be introduced. Could you tell us who you are to the choa audience?
Sonya: Hi, my name is Sonya Lee, and I’m a filmmaker, mostly, a producer, director, and National Geographic Explorer. And I mostly work on films and stories that kind of intersect ocean, nature, human, cultural spaces.
Harriet: So something that I have been thinking a lot about, especially over the course of publishing choa, is how much we've been through over the last several decades, like politically, economically. And yet we're still very tied to the land and the climate and the ocean that’s very specific to Korea just like culturally and just like geographically. And how much we have lost as a diaspora, just through the sort of violent nature of some of these things, including migration. And yet as a diaspora, it's not just what we lost. It's a lot about what we’re trying to create for ourselves in terms of our relationships to the literal land that we're on and by extension of that, the oceans. Also like rebuilding a new kind of relationship to the culture and the tradition around that as well.
Back in Volume 2, we actually had an interview with a Korean-American farmer named Kristyn, and she is maybe one of the only people that I know of that is growing East Asian and Korean crops in so-called North America. That was so striking to me because I think I've heard so much about representation in terms of opening up restaurants or bringing certain kinds of dishes to North America without any real sense of the people who grow it. And I think that also rings true for me with the people who are taking care of our oceans and allowing us to be able to eat the seafood that we eat. And so I’m really excited to talk to you because, again, it feels like a very new conversation to be having publicly as a diaspora.
So yeah, I guess on that note, you recently have been merging your ocean conservation work with your Korean culture, and we see this in your upcoming documentary, Our Ocean Table. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your journey to produce this piece, in this moment.
Sonya: Yeah, I don't know about you, but would you say you felt connected to the land here as a diaspora?
Harriet: In Toronto specifically?
Sonya: Yeah, just like living in so-called Canada.
Harriet: Growing up here, I was kind of insulated. And then it wasn't until I started going to other countries or other parts of Canada that I started to really understand that. But it took me a really long time.
Sonya: I was born in Korea, and I moved to Canada when I was six, and so I grew up outside of Vancouver, in Coquitlam, B.C. And I was always so mesmerized by the ocean and the forest. I grew up in a very nature conducive place, but I've always had an affinity for the ocean since I was a baby, even when I was in Korea. I forgot to say that I'm a marine biologist by training. And so moving into the marine science spaces, and then I worked in a lot of community conservation work. I worked with a lot of coastal communities, a lot of coastal First Nations communities, and they had such a strong connection to the place and the ocean. And I think it's part of being a settler immigrant, but also being away from your homeland, not feeling really rooted. And so I would come back from working with indigenous communities, coastal communities, feeling like, wow, it must be nice to have an ocean culture, and feeling like a little bit jealous about it for a long time. Not just in Canada, but in a lot of other places in the world that I've worked in.
Every time I come back from on location, I would make soondubu jjigae, because it's like my comfort food, when you eat white people food for a long time, and you have to have kimchi. So one of the first things I always make is soondubu jjigae. And I had just come back from working with the Heiltsuk Nation up in the Central Coast, and talking about their food and their connection to the ocean through food. And I was like, oh, must be nice. And I'm, you know, taking off heads off of anchovies to make stock, and then putting in kelp, and then throwing in mussels and clams, and then I realized, Oh, my God, there is so much seafood in all of the food that we eat. It's so casual that I didn't even make the connection that maybe my connection to the ocean is actually from my Korean culture. It's so foundational that we don't even think about it or talk about it, but it's like on our table and it's very obvious once you start looking.
And then once I had that aha moment, I was like, if I as somebody who cares about the ocean and thinks about the ocean didn't make that connection for like 30 years, what are people who are not inherently connected to the ocean, they're definitely not making that connection. So I've been working with so many different coastal communities and telling their stories. I really want to make this connection and tell our stories to our community. And that's how I started pitching around Our Ocean Table, this concept.
So Our Ocean Table is a three-part documentary series for TELUS Originals, and it's really a journey about connecting popular Korean cultural foods and the seafood behind those foods. Where does that seafood come from? Who's harvesting them? And what is the status of that? And is our culture and our food in peril? Or how do we keep eating it forever?
Harriet: Yeah, as you were saying that actually I had these like memories of, because I lived with my grandmother or my grandmother lived with my family for quite some time. So I have these memories of like she would get these boxes of anchovies, and she would try to get me to help her with cutting off the heads and stuff,
Sonya: And then like the stomach.
Harriet: Yeah, I was so creeped out about it. I couldn’t do it. She was just like, got to the point where she was like, “Okay, fine, just sit here with me.” I have those memories as well.
I agree. It's almost very unassuming for even for someone who's been born and raised in the city for most of my life.
But yeah, as a side note, I’m curious if you had any conversations with your parents or any siblings that you might have about ocean culture, or just like that relationship to the ocean?
Sonya: Yeah, I used to get made fun of how obsessed with the ocean I was. As a good Korean kid, I went to church. I don't go to church anymore. But a lot of my family friends were from the church community, and they would always make fun of me, because I was always talking about animals and the ocean. And I always felt like no one else cares. I've had conversations with my mom, especially. She would say that she loves looking at the ocean. It brings her a lot of joy, but she's so scared of the ocean, like going in. She doesn't like swimming. She doesn't like going into the ocean. She's scared of the ocean. And so she's always like, “I don't know where this came from.” And it's like something that she talks about all the time. And my brother doesn't really like it either. He likes the mountains, I like the ocean. And so, yeah, it's always been a mystery and it's always been there. I honestly think it's just so foundational that it's just there.
(Harriet) On the note of Our Ocean Table, someone who's featured in it, her name is Anna Ko from the Calgary Korean Cultural Centre, and she talks about food as a form of memory. That even without a recipe, the exact ingredients, or our mother teaching us, we can still recreate a dish through the memory of taste. So in your view, how does the memory act as a bridge between personal heritage, and the urgency of protecting the oceans that makes these dishes possible?
Sonya: Well, I'll answer with a question. What's your favourite Korean dish, and why?
Harriet: Oh, that’s a good question, it’s so…
Sonya: Okay, I'll change the question.
Harriet: Okay.
Sonya: What is your favourite dish that your grandma used to make?
Harriet: There’s two actually. There’s one that’s a samgyetang, and the other one is tteokbokki. I don't know how she did it, but she always got the right mix of salt and sweet and tenderness. I still remember the taste, but I can never exactly get it.
Sonya: Yeah, I think cross-culturally, food is such a memory. I've spoken to a lot of Korean chefs now and just like a lot of people in the diaspora as well, not just like first gen, second gen, but also people who were born in Korea and have memories of living in Korea. And I think everyone has really strong associations to a person or a place through food, and I think Koreans are kind of obsessed with the food, so it helps. But I think it makes me really scared because to evoke that memory, or if you feel nostalgic about that, oftentimes, like you go for that food, but if that food is based on seafood, then you're not going to be able to evoke that memory, or think about that person, or for me, and like many people in the diaspora, feel connected to our homeland and our culture that we don't live in anymore. And for me, a lot of it's seafood, and I know for a lot of people, it’s seafood as well. So it makes me sad, and I don't want other people to be sad. And I feel like that's why I'm really motivated to do something about it and get other people to think about it.
Harriet: It's very powerful the sort of memory that people have that is associated with the food that we have. You know, these memories make up so much of who we are, and yet, it does feel like there is a bit of a disconnect between us as disaporic people thinking about those memories and tied to that, our identities, and sort of the urgency that exists around our oceans. And our first volume was about water, and water specifically within the context of the climate crisis. And one of the, I suppose, motivating sort of reasons for me at least to want to have the space to talk about that was that I had this like very intense thought in my head about for all intents and purposes, like my family in Seoul and the surrounding area, it’s basically like an island, in that we're pretty much surrounded by water. If, for whatever reason, the country becomes so flooded, we're not exactly able to migrate northward by foot. And I was thinking a lot about like, can we make art about the homeland if we don't have a homeland? And I just like I had a lot of intense thoughts about like, ocean levels rising and all of these things. There is this big question of what happens to us and our memories, and our identities, and our relationships, if, you know, the things that we love to eat become endangered, something as like common as shrimp, or something that we understand to be as common as shrimp, but may not be as common very soon down the line.
Sonya: That concept of talking about the climate crisis or any other environmental issues through the lens of culture and food is, I think, not common. In the spaces that I work in and the wildlife science, nature spaces, I think there's a lot of value given to people, you know, the perception that like nature is inherently something that we need to save because it's beautiful or it's really interesting. And I think that's a common drive in narrative for a lot of people who inherently like animals and like the environment. But I don't know about you, but the people in our community that I know don't inherently have that kind of love for animals or drive to work in conservation or think about environmental issues. One, because we’re busy. We're immigrants, and we have other priorities. And two, I don’t think in our culture that kind of mindset is taught or common, but I think we do it in the realm of food or our country or our culture. There's a lot of that. And that's why I wanted to shift the kind of storytelling from, “We need to save the fish because they need to be saved, and they just deserve to live, and it’s beautiful.” No, I wanted to speak specifically to our community, which is that food is our memory and our culture, and our culture and our food is in danger. And I'm not saying don't eat fish. I want to eat fish. I'm just saying let's keep eating fish. And in order to do that, we need to figure it out.
Harriet: So on that note, your documentary is about as much about culture, family migration, as it is about ocean conservation. What was something that surprised you or something new that you learned during this process?
Sonya: I will have to say that it was a very interesting journey making this documentary, and any time you make a film, it's a team sport, you know? This was like a passion project of mine, but I had an amazing team. Joanna Wong and Priyanka Desai came on as producers, and I had a co-director, Jon Chiang, and Hannah Sung, who I believe you've worked with before.
Harriet: Yes, I love you, Hannah.
Sonya: Yeah, so Hannah came on as kind of my co-adventurer and co-host for the series. And I really learned a lot from Hannah because I think she brought her amazing ability to connect the dots between many different diasporic conversations in our culture and our Canadian culture. And one of the reasons why I really wanted to bring Hannah on the journey is because I come from the ocean side, and I really wanted Hannah's perspective on the journey when it comes to the cultural conversations. But also I wanted to bring her on a journey for the ocean things. So it really felt like she was pulling me in the culture part and I was bringing her into the ocean spaces. So I think there was a lot of co-learning there. And just like, Hannah’s such a veteran journalist, and just watching her kind of be in those spaces and learning from her to be a host. But also it was very interesting because the rest of the team, although they're not Korean, they're bringing their own experiences as their own diaspora and their own cultures into the storytelling. Yeah, we're using Korean culture as an example, but it was very cross-cutting the experiences of specific foods, seafoods, and also just thinking about memories and how do we preserve the memory when it comes to the ingredients in our foods. And so I think that was the biggest takeaway, not so much like from the ocean sustainability side, but just like how cross-cutting this kind of theme is, and how much it spoke to a lot of people on our team and people we shared it with. So I think that was the coolest thing.
Harriet: Was that the first time you and Hannah met in person?
Sonya: No. I have been following Hannah for a long time. You know, she was on TV when I was little.
Harriet: Yes.
Sonya: You know, she was my representation. Thank you, Hannah. And so it was during the pandemic, and I was obsessed with BTS at the time, and I had no one else to talk about BTS with. But Hannah on her Instagram was talking about BTS. And I was like, can I slide into Hannah Sung's DMs to talk about BTS?
Harriet: I love that.
Sonya: And I did.
Harriet: Yeah.
Sonya: And so we just became Internet friends. And once that world opened up again, and I was traveling to Toronto again, we met up quite a few times before.
Harriet: Okay.
Sonya: When this project was coming, it looked like it was going to go forward, the production executive at TELUS really wanted me to be on camera. And I don't like being on camera. I'm very much comfortable behind the camera because I'm a director, I'm a producer. But he really felt that I was one of the more authentic characters to be leading this journey, which I did not disagree with. I just didn't want to do it. So I just called Hannah. I was like, I would really like you to be a co-host with me because I was really not confident that I could pull it off without somebody else like a veteran like Hannah.
Harriet: Yeah, she's so talented. And I was just curious with that question because I mean, you as an individual come off very naturally in front of the camera, I must say, and you and Hannah just have such a great friendship chemistry So that was really fun to see. That was a really fun aspect of the documentary.
Sonya: Thank you. It's her professionalism and me just playing off of it.
Harriet: So at the end of the series, we kind of alluded to this earlier about you wanting to eat your favourite foods forever and you were wanting other people to eat your favorite food forever. And yeah, in order to do that, I think we can all agree that we all need to do a bit better for our oceans. And so you talk about how I mean, I think the whole series is kind of a love letter to the ocean and kind of having that emotional tug towards the ocean. As consumers buying and consuming seafood, are there other ways, especially from a distance, that we can think about ways that we can take care of our ocean?
Sonya: Seafood’s one of those things that's extremely difficult because there are seafood labelling programs like Ocean Wise or Seafood Watch out of Monterey Bay Aquarium. But a lot of these labels are, I would say those are the better sustainability labels you can look at. But it's a lot of extra steps to scan the barcode in the store and look up where your fish comes from and see whether or not it's sustainable on those charts. Sometimes it's not on those charts. Sometimes it's not as straightforward. Sometimes what's in the package is actually not what it is. A lot of seafood is mislabelled. So even for me who studied marine biology, it's really difficult for me to figure out like, should I eat this? Should I not eat this? It's a lot of extra work. I don't believe that you can go from never thinking about seafood to tracking every single thing that you buy. I think it's really unrealistic. And so I think one of the things that you can do is, the big baddies, you can be mindful of, like a lot of frozen shrimp.
If you see an episode of Our Ocean Table, we're talking about how a lot of the shrimp industry's not entirely great unless it’s locally caught within season with specific traps. And farmed salmon is doing not so good things to the environment. You can look for wild caught salmon. And then also tuna. We love tuna. I love tuna, but, you know, bluefin tuna is an endangered species, although it's extremely delicious. I don't want to say don't eat it because I don't want to tell you what to do. But what I do is, I save it for special occasions. I don't eat it all the time. I don't need tuna all the time, shrimp all the time. I don't eat shrimp or salmon. Farmed salmon. I like wild salmon. But being more mindful about when you eat seafood instead of throwing it in everything, or frozen shrimp in your soondubu, or just not mindfully consuming seafood, being like, oh, actually this is a precious commodity. We should save it for special occasions. And I think even just being mindful and eating less of it, I think hopefully helps. And like that's step one. And if you want to graduate into like looking up where your seafood comes from, I'm super happy for you to do that, and there are a lot of resources, and good luck.
Harriet: So we've talked a lot about Our Ocean Table, and I’m excited for people to watch it when it comes out, But I think it would be remiss if I didn't talk of a little bit about some of your other work, because I know you've been, more behind the scenes for quite a number of years, right, before being on screen for Our Ocean Table. So in terms of your work with other organizations like the National Geographic, Plankton Productions, and Ocean School, you have centered the voices of new parents and children, among other communities. How has working in these ways and with these organizations, and with these communities, how has that kind of shaped the way that you do your work now, whether or not that’s with Our Ocean Table or other work that you're doing?
Sonya: Yeah, that's a really long question. I'm trying to think of how to answer that succinctly. So I've had a really weird meandering career. Obviously, I started out in science, and I went into science education, and science communication. Ocean School was an ocean education media project. So it's where I learned filmmaking by using stories to talk about science. And that was for the National Film Board of Canada. And through that I learned how do you communicate science in an entertaining way visually and create story around it? So I think my science background and my science education background come into play for that. With the National Geographic Society, I'm very privileged to be part of the Explorers community, and I have the support of essentially the best storytellers in wildlife and nature spaces. With that, I'm able to kind of push my storytelling, and we’re actually with one of the chefs from Our Ocean Table, and with the National Geographic Society, I'm journeying back to Korea with him to figure out where his crab species come from. So he imports his crabs from Korea. Like kkotge crabs. to make ganjang gejang, so raw crabs marinated in soy sauce in Vancouver. So it's a journey about, he's trying to practice this culture and traditions in Vancouver but needs to import ingredients from home, but wants to know where his food comes from. So I'm continuing that food culture saga through National Geographic. And I think like every single thing that I've done really, yeah, contributes to my creativity and how I tell stories and being mindful about not just like scientific accuracy, but the importance of being, because I worked with a lot of coastal communities that not demonizing any culture, not demonizing fishers or fishing and just putting equal, I guess, significance to culture and fishing practices, as well as conservation and sustainability.
Harriet: One of the many things that I appreciate about your work is that and we saw this on Our Ocean Table, and it sounds like it'll be a part of this ganjang gejang documentary that you do, which I'm very excited to see, by the way, is that you have this way of like really collaborating with people and really honouring the people at the center of these stories and where they come from and the knowledge that they bring. And it feels like you do it in a way that is very respectful and very ethical. And so I'm wondering what it means for you to take these practices into the work that you do. I imagine that something that maybe took some practice to get to the point that you are. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.
Sonya: Yeah, it's very important to me. I would say it's like my biggest value as a filmmaker and as a storyteller. It's such a privilege for people to share their stories with me and to the world. I have to respect their trust and be able to portray their stories and their perspectives in a way that is authentic. I think because I don't actually come from a filmmaking background, I come from a science background, and I actually also majored in international development. So I kind of tied in marine biology and international development. And what was really important to me was how do you achieve food security but also marine conservation. So it's something I studied, and it's something that I worked with a lot with coastal communities as an academic. And so then transitioning into the storytelling space, it's within the same realm, but instead of working on collaborating on creating data together, it's about creating stories together. So I think I just come from a long history of that being my practice. But at the same time, I feel like a lot of “this is how documentaries are done” are inherently extractive practices where outside filmmakers very usually not from that community, go into space and ask people for their time and their stories and their traditions and then they take it away. Do whatever they want with it, and get their own accolades and lauded as an amazing filmmaker. Whereas this community that just invested a lot of time and their stories and their emotions into something they often don't get to see it.
This is true for a lot of documentaries like wildlife, nature science, conservation documentaries. And when I entered the space, it just felt really weird, and it was something that I constantly asked like, Why do you do it this way? Why do you do this way? And it's just been a constant conversation with people in the industry and people I worked with have like, you know, we can not do it that way and we can do better things because at the end of the day, I'm just making movies, and these are people's lives, and I don't want to practice creativity and telling stories if it feels bad in my tummy. And as a young woman, a racialized woman in a predominantly white male dominated space, it's been extremely hard. And there's been a lot of friction to be able to practice filmmaking in a way that I feel like is ethical. But I think over the past few years I've learned of other organizations and other filmmakers who share the same values and ethics when it comes to working in documentaries in a way that honours people’s stories and is respectful of people's rights. So it gives me a lot of hope and I am transitioning into working with people who share those values more. But it was very challenging, and I would say very important to me as a filmmaker.
Harriet: Yeah, thank you for that. That really resonates with me. And so I appreciate it. One of the last things I want to ask you, so as we are talking to you in the context of our Volume 5 about i-byeol, so we’ve been asking those of our contributors, what is i-byeol mean for you? And this might kind of overlap with some of the things that you've already talked about. And I think for me, part of the reason why we wanted to reach out to you is, as I mentioned in our initial call, we actually had thought maybe we'd talk about DMZ, the wildlife that is thriving there, and the sort of like dystopian feeling that I personally get when I think about that, where you have this like, the land itself is inherently neutral, but then you have on top of that the political tensions and the stuff that we politically, economically, emotionally, sort of place on to the physical land. So you have these animals that are, I guess, politically neutral, and yet, they're still, despite whatever is going on, they still kind of build a life in this very tense place. And so that's kind of initially what we thought about talking about, but then that kind of shifted, especially as this is our last volume wanting to bring in the sort of water aspect back into what we're publishing. And I think there are similarly, I wouldn't say there is like a dystopian necessarily, but just there is a sort of dystopian sort of factor to like how, how much our oceans are in crisis right now. But then also just talking to you, there is still hope in that we can come together and talk about this and make something good out of it. And so I'm wondering, that was a very long winded way to ask you what i-byeol means for you.
Sonya: In the context of our conversation, I think i-byeol to a lot of natural places, a lot of species, it's a thing that’s happening when it comes to, extinction of animals and natural places. And it is happening to the species that we eat. I just came back from Korea, and I've been talking to a lot of fishers and I went to a lot of fish markets, talked to a lot of fishers, went to really small fishing towns, and some of them were talking about how they can't get specific things anymore, or they're talking about how the kkotge crab where it's usually very popular, they had a really bad season and it's moved up north, and so it's already happening in our homeland. Species are disappearing. People are having to go further and further to catch some of the fish that they traditionally catch in specific places. And it's really sad. But I also have a lot of hope because the reason why I also want to focus on the Korean community and Korean stories is I really have a lot of hope and faith in the Korean ability to mobilize together as a nation and as a culture.
And I was in Korea until 1998 through the IMF crisis in Korea. And one of my core memories as a child in Korea is lining up and having to choose between my gold dol banjis because we could only keep one, because the whole nation had this campaign to give the government their gold jewellery, you know. And it was, I remember lines and lines and we all did it, and there's this capacity for Koreans to, my mom calls it, 으쌰으쌰 culture, where Koreans just get together and decide to do something. I think it translates into a lot of modern things like K-Pop stans. Can be really good, can be really bad. I think there's that culture there. I really believe that if more people talk about this, I really want that Korean mentality to do something about it, to kick in. And I have a lot of faith in it.
Like one of the big hopeful things that I learned about, I was researching kelp stories. So kelp forests are disappearing all over the world, but Korea has one of the most fascinating and heavily, like they're restoring their kelp forests the most out of a lot of places around the world. And one of the researchers said, I guess there's this thing called Tree Planting Day in Korea. I don't know what it is in Korean, I forget. But there's a National Tree Planting Day. And he said that after the Korean War, obviously the country was decimated and a lot of nature spaces were bombed or destroyed. And there was a campaign where the whole nation went and reforested and replanted a lot of green spaces. And so there's National Tree Planting Day. And if you go to Korea, there's actually surprisingly a lot of green space, even in the heart of Seoul too, which I was really surprised about. And so the researchers, what they're trying to do is they're trying to take the same concept and into the ocean. And he also had a lot of faith and was able to mobilize that Korean cultural aspect. So that gave me a lot of inspiration for having hope as well. So yeah, I think the more we talk about it and having these kinds of things, I think as a culture, we have a lot of, you know, I think we could do it.
Harriet: Yeah, and you can see more about the kelp farming in the documentary, right? So I hope people will check it out. Before we end the conversation, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to do a little rapid fire questions.
Sonya: Yeah, go for it.
Harriet: First question, very important question, who is your BTS bias?
Sonya: Oh, Jungkook.
Harriet: Jungkook.
Sonya: It started as Jimin, and then now it’s Jungkook. But, OT7.
Harriet: Do you have a favourite BTS song?
Sonya: It changes with the mood, but always my go-to is probably… Okay, like a fun song or a slow song?
Harriet: Oh, I leave it to you to tell us what you want to share.
Sonya: Okay, today I feel like Spring Day, but usually…
Harriet: Oh, my gosh, I love that song. Sorry.
Sonya: I know.
Harriet: You can go ahead.
Sonya: But like, for the dance numbers, in their concerts, they usually do a combination of 쩔어, FIRE, and IDOL. And I just like all their big dance numbers.
Harriet: Nice. I have to also shout out Hannah again, because she had a BTS event in Toronto, I think, last year, and that was like my BTS origin story. So shout out to Hannah for getting a lot of us onto BTS. On your website, you are a self-proclaimed fish nerd. I'm wondering if you have a favourite fish.
Sonya: Oh, that's also changed by where I am. But today I'll think of a tropical fish. And my favourite tropical fish today is a Picasso triggerfish. Please look it up. They look like Pokémon.
Harriet: Okay, sounds good. One more question. You mentioned soondubu. as one of your comfort foods. Do you have any other comfort foods? Korean comfort foods?
Sonya: Yeah, recently, I’ve been really into… Oh, what is, what is that? Cheonggukjang.
Harriet: Cheonggukjang. Oh, yeah.
Sonya: Yeah, I didn’t eat it as a kid because it’s like level five, you know?
Harriet: Yeah, it's kind of a…
Sonya: It’s like natto, but like in doenjang jjigae form. But I recently got into it, and now I love it so much.
Harriet: Yeah, I find that there’s a lot of Korean food where it’s kind of and acquired adult taste. Maybe that's a generalization but certain foods I feel like you appreciate the more you eat it. Thank you so much for joining us for this interview. I have been following your work for a long time, so I'm really excited that you actually were able to join us in person, no less.
Sonya: Thank you so much for having me.
Harriet: Thank you for joining us for choa. For people who are joining us via video, you’ll notice that Sonya is wearing some headphones. Behind the scenes, before we started this interview, she was kind of our tech extraordinaire, so thank you so much for helping me set that up. But yeah, welcome to choa. Thank you for joining us.
Sonya: Oh, no problem. I might look like a dork, but the audio quality will be better.
Harriet: Yeah, and we're so thankful for it. But yeah, every interview that we do, we always start with asking the person to introduce themselves in the way that they like to be introduced. Could you tell us who you are to the choa audience?
Sonya: Hi, my name is Sonya Lee, and I’m a filmmaker, mostly, a producer, director, and National Geographic Explorer. And I mostly work on films and stories that kind of intersect ocean, nature, human, cultural spaces.
Harriet: So something that I have been thinking a lot about, especially over the course of publishing choa, is how much we've been through over the last several decades, like politically, economically. And yet we're still very tied to the land and the climate and the ocean that’s very specific to Korea just like culturally and just like geographically. And how much we have lost as a diaspora, just through the sort of violent nature of some of these things, including migration. And yet as a diaspora, it's not just what we lost. It's a lot about what we’re trying to create for ourselves in terms of our relationships to the literal land that we're on and by extension of that, the oceans. Also like rebuilding a new kind of relationship to the culture and the tradition around that as well.
Back in Volume 2, we actually had an interview with a Korean-American farmer named Kristyn, and she is maybe one of the only people that I know of that is growing East Asian and Korean crops in so-called North America. That was so striking to me because I think I've heard so much about representation in terms of opening up restaurants or bringing certain kinds of dishes to North America without any real sense of the people who grow it. And I think that also rings true for me with the people who are taking care of our oceans and allowing us to be able to eat the seafood that we eat. And so I’m really excited to talk to you because, again, it feels like a very new conversation to be having publicly as a diaspora.
So yeah, I guess on that note, you recently have been merging your ocean conservation work with your Korean culture, and we see this in your upcoming documentary, Our Ocean Table. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your journey to produce this piece, in this moment.
Sonya: Yeah, I don't know about you, but would you say you felt connected to the land here as a diaspora?
Harriet: In Toronto specifically?
Sonya: Yeah, just like living in so-called Canada.
Harriet: Growing up here, I was kind of insulated. And then it wasn't until I started going to other countries or other parts of Canada that I started to really understand that. But it took me a really long time.
Sonya: I was born in Korea, and I moved to Canada when I was six, and so I grew up outside of Vancouver, in Coquitlam, B.C. And I was always so mesmerized by the ocean and the forest. I grew up in a very nature conducive place, but I've always had an affinity for the ocean since I was a baby, even when I was in Korea. I forgot to say that I'm a marine biologist by training. And so moving into the marine science spaces, and then I worked in a lot of community conservation work. I worked with a lot of coastal communities, a lot of coastal First Nations communities, and they had such a strong connection to the place and the ocean. And I think it's part of being a settler immigrant, but also being away from your homeland, not feeling really rooted. And so I would come back from working with indigenous communities, coastal communities, feeling like, wow, it must be nice to have an ocean culture, and feeling like a little bit jealous about it for a long time. Not just in Canada, but in a lot of other places in the world that I've worked in.
Every time I come back from on location, I would make soondubu jjigae, because it's like my comfort food, when you eat white people food for a long time, and you have to have kimchi. So one of the first things I always make is soondubu jjigae. And I had just come back from working with the Heiltsuk Nation up in the Central Coast, and talking about their food and their connection to the ocean through food. And I was like, oh, must be nice. And I'm, you know, taking off heads off of anchovies to make stock, and then putting in kelp, and then throwing in mussels and clams, and then I realized, Oh, my God, there is so much seafood in all of the food that we eat. It's so casual that I didn't even make the connection that maybe my connection to the ocean is actually from my Korean culture. It's so foundational that we don't even think about it or talk about it, but it's like on our table and it's very obvious once you start looking.
And then once I had that aha moment, I was like, if I as somebody who cares about the ocean and thinks about the ocean didn't make that connection for like 30 years, what are people who are not inherently connected to the ocean, they're definitely not making that connection. So I've been working with so many different coastal communities and telling their stories. I really want to make this connection and tell our stories to our community. And that's how I started pitching around Our Ocean Table, this concept.
So Our Ocean Table is a three-part documentary series for TELUS Originals, and it's really a journey about connecting popular Korean cultural foods and the seafood behind those foods. Where does that seafood come from? Who's harvesting them? And what is the status of that? And is our culture and our food in peril? Or how do we keep eating it forever?
Harriet: Yeah, as you were saying that actually I had these like memories of, because I lived with my grandmother or my grandmother lived with my family for quite some time. So I have these memories of like she would get these boxes of anchovies, and she would try to get me to help her with cutting off the heads and stuff,
Sonya: And then like the stomach.
Harriet: Yeah, I was so creeped out about it. I couldn’t do it. She was just like, got to the point where she was like, “Okay, fine, just sit here with me.” I have those memories as well.
I agree. It's almost very unassuming for even for someone who's been born and raised in the city for most of my life.
But yeah, as a side note, I’m curious if you had any conversations with your parents or any siblings that you might have about ocean culture, or just like that relationship to the ocean?
Sonya: Yeah, I used to get made fun of how obsessed with the ocean I was. As a good Korean kid, I went to church. I don't go to church anymore. But a lot of my family friends were from the church community, and they would always make fun of me, because I was always talking about animals and the ocean. And I always felt like no one else cares. I've had conversations with my mom, especially. She would say that she loves looking at the ocean. It brings her a lot of joy, but she's so scared of the ocean, like going in. She doesn't like swimming. She doesn't like going into the ocean. She's scared of the ocean. And so she's always like, “I don't know where this came from.” And it's like something that she talks about all the time. And my brother doesn't really like it either. He likes the mountains, I like the ocean. And so, yeah, it's always been a mystery and it's always been there. I honestly think it's just so foundational that it's just there.
(Harriet) On the note of Our Ocean Table, someone who's featured in it, her name is Anna Ko from the Calgary Korean Cultural Centre, and she talks about food as a form of memory. That even without a recipe, the exact ingredients, or our mother teaching us, we can still recreate a dish through the memory of taste. So in your view, how does the memory act as a bridge between personal heritage, and the urgency of protecting the oceans that makes these dishes possible?
Sonya: Well, I'll answer with a question. What's your favourite Korean dish, and why?
Harriet: Oh, that’s a good question, it’s so…
Sonya: Okay, I'll change the question.
Harriet: Okay.
Sonya: What is your favourite dish that your grandma used to make?
Harriet: There’s two actually. There’s one that’s a samgyetang, and the other one is tteokbokki. I don't know how she did it, but she always got the right mix of salt and sweet and tenderness. I still remember the taste, but I can never exactly get it.
Sonya: Yeah, I think cross-culturally, food is such a memory. I've spoken to a lot of Korean chefs now and just like a lot of people in the diaspora as well, not just like first gen, second gen, but also people who were born in Korea and have memories of living in Korea. And I think everyone has really strong associations to a person or a place through food, and I think Koreans are kind of obsessed with the food, so it helps. But I think it makes me really scared because to evoke that memory, or if you feel nostalgic about that, oftentimes, like you go for that food, but if that food is based on seafood, then you're not going to be able to evoke that memory, or think about that person, or for me, and like many people in the diaspora, feel connected to our homeland and our culture that we don't live in anymore. And for me, a lot of it's seafood, and I know for a lot of people, it’s seafood as well. So it makes me sad, and I don't want other people to be sad. And I feel like that's why I'm really motivated to do something about it and get other people to think about it.
Harriet: It's very powerful the sort of memory that people have that is associated with the food that we have. You know, these memories make up so much of who we are, and yet, it does feel like there is a bit of a disconnect between us as disaporic people thinking about those memories and tied to that, our identities, and sort of the urgency that exists around our oceans. And our first volume was about water, and water specifically within the context of the climate crisis. And one of the, I suppose, motivating sort of reasons for me at least to want to have the space to talk about that was that I had this like very intense thought in my head about for all intents and purposes, like my family in Seoul and the surrounding area, it’s basically like an island, in that we're pretty much surrounded by water. If, for whatever reason, the country becomes so flooded, we're not exactly able to migrate northward by foot. And I was thinking a lot about like, can we make art about the homeland if we don't have a homeland? And I just like I had a lot of intense thoughts about like, ocean levels rising and all of these things. There is this big question of what happens to us and our memories, and our identities, and our relationships, if, you know, the things that we love to eat become endangered, something as like common as shrimp, or something that we understand to be as common as shrimp, but may not be as common very soon down the line.
Sonya: That concept of talking about the climate crisis or any other environmental issues through the lens of culture and food is, I think, not common. In the spaces that I work in and the wildlife science, nature spaces, I think there's a lot of value given to people, you know, the perception that like nature is inherently something that we need to save because it's beautiful or it's really interesting. And I think that's a common drive in narrative for a lot of people who inherently like animals and like the environment. But I don't know about you, but the people in our community that I know don't inherently have that kind of love for animals or drive to work in conservation or think about environmental issues. One, because we’re busy. We're immigrants, and we have other priorities. And two, I don’t think in our culture that kind of mindset is taught or common, but I think we do it in the realm of food or our country or our culture. There's a lot of that. And that's why I wanted to shift the kind of storytelling from, “We need to save the fish because they need to be saved, and they just deserve to live, and it’s beautiful.” No, I wanted to speak specifically to our community, which is that food is our memory and our culture, and our culture and our food is in danger. And I'm not saying don't eat fish. I want to eat fish. I'm just saying let's keep eating fish. And in order to do that, we need to figure it out.
Harriet: So on that note, your documentary is about as much about culture, family migration, as it is about ocean conservation. What was something that surprised you or something new that you learned during this process?
Sonya: I will have to say that it was a very interesting journey making this documentary, and any time you make a film, it's a team sport, you know? This was like a passion project of mine, but I had an amazing team. Joanna Wong and Priyanka Desai came on as producers, and I had a co-director, Jon Chiang, and Hannah Sung, who I believe you've worked with before.
Harriet: Yes, I love you, Hannah.
Sonya: Yeah, so Hannah came on as kind of my co-adventurer and co-host for the series. And I really learned a lot from Hannah because I think she brought her amazing ability to connect the dots between many different diasporic conversations in our culture and our Canadian culture. And one of the reasons why I really wanted to bring Hannah on the journey is because I come from the ocean side, and I really wanted Hannah's perspective on the journey when it comes to the cultural conversations. But also I wanted to bring her on a journey for the ocean things. So it really felt like she was pulling me in the culture part and I was bringing her into the ocean spaces. So I think there was a lot of co-learning there. And just like, Hannah’s such a veteran journalist, and just watching her kind of be in those spaces and learning from her to be a host. But also it was very interesting because the rest of the team, although they're not Korean, they're bringing their own experiences as their own diaspora and their own cultures into the storytelling. Yeah, we're using Korean culture as an example, but it was very cross-cutting the experiences of specific foods, seafoods, and also just thinking about memories and how do we preserve the memory when it comes to the ingredients in our foods. And so I think that was the biggest takeaway, not so much like from the ocean sustainability side, but just like how cross-cutting this kind of theme is, and how much it spoke to a lot of people on our team and people we shared it with. So I think that was the coolest thing.
Harriet: Was that the first time you and Hannah met in person?
Sonya: No. I have been following Hannah for a long time. You know, she was on TV when I was little.
Harriet: Yes.
Sonya: You know, she was my representation. Thank you, Hannah. And so it was during the pandemic, and I was obsessed with BTS at the time, and I had no one else to talk about BTS with. But Hannah on her Instagram was talking about BTS. And I was like, can I slide into Hannah Sung's DMs to talk about BTS?
Harriet: I love that.
Sonya: And I did.
Harriet: Yeah.
Sonya: And so we just became Internet friends. And once that world opened up again, and I was traveling to Toronto again, we met up quite a few times before.
Harriet: Okay.
Sonya: When this project was coming, it looked like it was going to go forward, the production executive at TELUS really wanted me to be on camera. And I don't like being on camera. I'm very much comfortable behind the camera because I'm a director, I'm a producer. But he really felt that I was one of the more authentic characters to be leading this journey, which I did not disagree with. I just didn't want to do it. So I just called Hannah. I was like, I would really like you to be a co-host with me because I was really not confident that I could pull it off without somebody else like a veteran like Hannah.
Harriet: Yeah, she's so talented. And I was just curious with that question because I mean, you as an individual come off very naturally in front of the camera, I must say, and you and Hannah just have such a great friendship chemistry So that was really fun to see. That was a really fun aspect of the documentary.
Sonya: Thank you. It's her professionalism and me just playing off of it.
Harriet: So at the end of the series, we kind of alluded to this earlier about you wanting to eat your favourite foods forever and you were wanting other people to eat your favorite food forever. And yeah, in order to do that, I think we can all agree that we all need to do a bit better for our oceans. And so you talk about how I mean, I think the whole series is kind of a love letter to the ocean and kind of having that emotional tug towards the ocean. As consumers buying and consuming seafood, are there other ways, especially from a distance, that we can think about ways that we can take care of our ocean?
Sonya: Seafood’s one of those things that's extremely difficult because there are seafood labelling programs like Ocean Wise or Seafood Watch out of Monterey Bay Aquarium. But a lot of these labels are, I would say those are the better sustainability labels you can look at. But it's a lot of extra steps to scan the barcode in the store and look up where your fish comes from and see whether or not it's sustainable on those charts. Sometimes it's not on those charts. Sometimes it's not as straightforward. Sometimes what's in the package is actually not what it is. A lot of seafood is mislabelled. So even for me who studied marine biology, it's really difficult for me to figure out like, should I eat this? Should I not eat this? It's a lot of extra work. I don't believe that you can go from never thinking about seafood to tracking every single thing that you buy. I think it's really unrealistic. And so I think one of the things that you can do is, the big baddies, you can be mindful of, like a lot of frozen shrimp.
If you see an episode of Our Ocean Table, we're talking about how a lot of the shrimp industry's not entirely great unless it’s locally caught within season with specific traps. And farmed salmon is doing not so good things to the environment. You can look for wild caught salmon. And then also tuna. We love tuna. I love tuna, but, you know, bluefin tuna is an endangered species, although it's extremely delicious. I don't want to say don't eat it because I don't want to tell you what to do. But what I do is, I save it for special occasions. I don't eat it all the time. I don't need tuna all the time, shrimp all the time. I don't eat shrimp or salmon. Farmed salmon. I like wild salmon. But being more mindful about when you eat seafood instead of throwing it in everything, or frozen shrimp in your soondubu, or just not mindfully consuming seafood, being like, oh, actually this is a precious commodity. We should save it for special occasions. And I think even just being mindful and eating less of it, I think hopefully helps. And like that's step one. And if you want to graduate into like looking up where your seafood comes from, I'm super happy for you to do that, and there are a lot of resources, and good luck.
Harriet: So we've talked a lot about Our Ocean Table, and I’m excited for people to watch it when it comes out, But I think it would be remiss if I didn't talk of a little bit about some of your other work, because I know you've been, more behind the scenes for quite a number of years, right, before being on screen for Our Ocean Table. So in terms of your work with other organizations like the National Geographic, Plankton Productions, and Ocean School, you have centered the voices of new parents and children, among other communities. How has working in these ways and with these organizations, and with these communities, how has that kind of shaped the way that you do your work now, whether or not that’s with Our Ocean Table or other work that you're doing?
Sonya: Yeah, that's a really long question. I'm trying to think of how to answer that succinctly. So I've had a really weird meandering career. Obviously, I started out in science, and I went into science education, and science communication. Ocean School was an ocean education media project. So it's where I learned filmmaking by using stories to talk about science. And that was for the National Film Board of Canada. And through that I learned how do you communicate science in an entertaining way visually and create story around it? So I think my science background and my science education background come into play for that. With the National Geographic Society, I'm very privileged to be part of the Explorers community, and I have the support of essentially the best storytellers in wildlife and nature spaces. With that, I'm able to kind of push my storytelling, and we’re actually with one of the chefs from Our Ocean Table, and with the National Geographic Society, I'm journeying back to Korea with him to figure out where his crab species come from. So he imports his crabs from Korea. Like kkotge crabs. to make ganjang gejang, so raw crabs marinated in soy sauce in Vancouver. So it's a journey about, he's trying to practice this culture and traditions in Vancouver but needs to import ingredients from home, but wants to know where his food comes from. So I'm continuing that food culture saga through National Geographic. And I think like every single thing that I've done really, yeah, contributes to my creativity and how I tell stories and being mindful about not just like scientific accuracy, but the importance of being, because I worked with a lot of coastal communities that not demonizing any culture, not demonizing fishers or fishing and just putting equal, I guess, significance to culture and fishing practices, as well as conservation and sustainability.
Harriet: One of the many things that I appreciate about your work is that and we saw this on Our Ocean Table, and it sounds like it'll be a part of this ganjang gejang documentary that you do, which I'm very excited to see, by the way, is that you have this way of like really collaborating with people and really honouring the people at the center of these stories and where they come from and the knowledge that they bring. And it feels like you do it in a way that is very respectful and very ethical. And so I'm wondering what it means for you to take these practices into the work that you do. I imagine that something that maybe took some practice to get to the point that you are. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.
Sonya: Yeah, it's very important to me. I would say it's like my biggest value as a filmmaker and as a storyteller. It's such a privilege for people to share their stories with me and to the world. I have to respect their trust and be able to portray their stories and their perspectives in a way that is authentic. I think because I don't actually come from a filmmaking background, I come from a science background, and I actually also majored in international development. So I kind of tied in marine biology and international development. And what was really important to me was how do you achieve food security but also marine conservation. So it's something I studied, and it's something that I worked with a lot with coastal communities as an academic. And so then transitioning into the storytelling space, it's within the same realm, but instead of working on collaborating on creating data together, it's about creating stories together. So I think I just come from a long history of that being my practice. But at the same time, I feel like a lot of “this is how documentaries are done” are inherently extractive practices where outside filmmakers very usually not from that community, go into space and ask people for their time and their stories and their traditions and then they take it away. Do whatever they want with it, and get their own accolades and lauded as an amazing filmmaker. Whereas this community that just invested a lot of time and their stories and their emotions into something they often don't get to see it.
This is true for a lot of documentaries like wildlife, nature science, conservation documentaries. And when I entered the space, it just felt really weird, and it was something that I constantly asked like, Why do you do it this way? Why do you do this way? And it's just been a constant conversation with people in the industry and people I worked with have like, you know, we can not do it that way and we can do better things because at the end of the day, I'm just making movies, and these are people's lives, and I don't want to practice creativity and telling stories if it feels bad in my tummy. And as a young woman, a racialized woman in a predominantly white male dominated space, it's been extremely hard. And there's been a lot of friction to be able to practice filmmaking in a way that I feel like is ethical. But I think over the past few years I've learned of other organizations and other filmmakers who share the same values and ethics when it comes to working in documentaries in a way that honours people’s stories and is respectful of people's rights. So it gives me a lot of hope and I am transitioning into working with people who share those values more. But it was very challenging, and I would say very important to me as a filmmaker.
Harriet: Yeah, thank you for that. That really resonates with me. And so I appreciate it. One of the last things I want to ask you, so as we are talking to you in the context of our Volume 5 about i-byeol, so we’ve been asking those of our contributors, what is i-byeol mean for you? And this might kind of overlap with some of the things that you've already talked about. And I think for me, part of the reason why we wanted to reach out to you is, as I mentioned in our initial call, we actually had thought maybe we'd talk about DMZ, the wildlife that is thriving there, and the sort of like dystopian feeling that I personally get when I think about that, where you have this like, the land itself is inherently neutral, but then you have on top of that the political tensions and the stuff that we politically, economically, emotionally, sort of place on to the physical land. So you have these animals that are, I guess, politically neutral, and yet, they're still, despite whatever is going on, they still kind of build a life in this very tense place. And so that's kind of initially what we thought about talking about, but then that kind of shifted, especially as this is our last volume wanting to bring in the sort of water aspect back into what we're publishing. And I think there are similarly, I wouldn't say there is like a dystopian necessarily, but just there is a sort of dystopian sort of factor to like how, how much our oceans are in crisis right now. But then also just talking to you, there is still hope in that we can come together and talk about this and make something good out of it. And so I'm wondering, that was a very long winded way to ask you what i-byeol means for you.
Sonya: In the context of our conversation, I think i-byeol to a lot of natural places, a lot of species, it's a thing that’s happening when it comes to, extinction of animals and natural places. And it is happening to the species that we eat. I just came back from Korea, and I've been talking to a lot of fishers and I went to a lot of fish markets, talked to a lot of fishers, went to really small fishing towns, and some of them were talking about how they can't get specific things anymore, or they're talking about how the kkotge crab where it's usually very popular, they had a really bad season and it's moved up north, and so it's already happening in our homeland. Species are disappearing. People are having to go further and further to catch some of the fish that they traditionally catch in specific places. And it's really sad. But I also have a lot of hope because the reason why I also want to focus on the Korean community and Korean stories is I really have a lot of hope and faith in the Korean ability to mobilize together as a nation and as a culture.
And I was in Korea until 1998 through the IMF crisis in Korea. And one of my core memories as a child in Korea is lining up and having to choose between my gold dol banjis because we could only keep one, because the whole nation had this campaign to give the government their gold jewellery, you know. And it was, I remember lines and lines and we all did it, and there's this capacity for Koreans to, my mom calls it, 으쌰으쌰 culture, where Koreans just get together and decide to do something. I think it translates into a lot of modern things like K-Pop stans. Can be really good, can be really bad. I think there's that culture there. I really believe that if more people talk about this, I really want that Korean mentality to do something about it, to kick in. And I have a lot of faith in it.
Like one of the big hopeful things that I learned about, I was researching kelp stories. So kelp forests are disappearing all over the world, but Korea has one of the most fascinating and heavily, like they're restoring their kelp forests the most out of a lot of places around the world. And one of the researchers said, I guess there's this thing called Tree Planting Day in Korea. I don't know what it is in Korean, I forget. But there's a National Tree Planting Day. And he said that after the Korean War, obviously the country was decimated and a lot of nature spaces were bombed or destroyed. And there was a campaign where the whole nation went and reforested and replanted a lot of green spaces. And so there's National Tree Planting Day. And if you go to Korea, there's actually surprisingly a lot of green space, even in the heart of Seoul too, which I was really surprised about. And so the researchers, what they're trying to do is they're trying to take the same concept and into the ocean. And he also had a lot of faith and was able to mobilize that Korean cultural aspect. So that gave me a lot of inspiration for having hope as well. So yeah, I think the more we talk about it and having these kinds of things, I think as a culture, we have a lot of, you know, I think we could do it.
Harriet: Yeah, and you can see more about the kelp farming in the documentary, right? So I hope people will check it out. Before we end the conversation, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to do a little rapid fire questions.
Sonya: Yeah, go for it.
Harriet: First question, very important question, who is your BTS bias?
Sonya: Oh, Jungkook.
Harriet: Jungkook.
Sonya: It started as Jimin, and then now it’s Jungkook. But, OT7.
Harriet: Do you have a favourite BTS song?
Sonya: It changes with the mood, but always my go-to is probably… Okay, like a fun song or a slow song?
Harriet: Oh, I leave it to you to tell us what you want to share.
Sonya: Okay, today I feel like Spring Day, but usually…
Harriet: Oh, my gosh, I love that song. Sorry.
Sonya: I know.
Harriet: You can go ahead.
Sonya: But like, for the dance numbers, in their concerts, they usually do a combination of 쩔어, FIRE, and IDOL. And I just like all their big dance numbers.
Harriet: Nice. I have to also shout out Hannah again, because she had a BTS event in Toronto, I think, last year, and that was like my BTS origin story. So shout out to Hannah for getting a lot of us onto BTS. On your website, you are a self-proclaimed fish nerd. I'm wondering if you have a favourite fish.
Sonya: Oh, that's also changed by where I am. But today I'll think of a tropical fish. And my favourite tropical fish today is a Picasso triggerfish. Please look it up. They look like Pokémon.
Harriet: Okay, sounds good. One more question. You mentioned soondubu. as one of your comfort foods. Do you have any other comfort foods? Korean comfort foods?
Sonya: Yeah, recently, I’ve been really into… Oh, what is, what is that? Cheonggukjang.
Harriet: Cheonggukjang. Oh, yeah.
Sonya: Yeah, I didn’t eat it as a kid because it’s like level five, you know?
Harriet: Yeah, it's kind of a…
Sonya: It’s like natto, but like in doenjang jjigae form. But I recently got into it, and now I love it so much.
Harriet: Yeah, I find that there’s a lot of Korean food where it’s kind of and acquired adult taste. Maybe that's a generalization but certain foods I feel like you appreciate the more you eat it. Thank you so much for joining us for this interview. I have been following your work for a long time, so I'm really excited that you actually were able to join us in person, no less.
Sonya: Thank you so much for having me.
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Sonya Lee is a Korean-Canadian filmmaker and National Geographic Explorer dedicated to stories that intersect science, nature, people and culture. She applies impact-strategy and storytelling to engage new audiences in ocean issues. Through her production company, Plankton Productions, Sonya is currently focusing on projects that combine her love of food, her Korean culture and ocean conservation. She is passionate about community-collaborative filmmaking and ethical science communication, leading workshops nationally and internationally. She has a background in Marine Biology and International Development Studies, and you can find her in the ocean as an avid diver and proud fish nerd.
Web: sonyaslee.com | IG: @sonyaslee |
