Feasting on world affairs

Meet the creators of Conflict Kitchen, which only serves food from countries the U.S. government is in conflict with. Their latest focus? Kim Jong-un's North Korea

Dishing it out on North Korea

By Chung Hyun-chae

Most people have heard the old saying about never bringing politics to the dinner table. Dawn Weleski has spent the last several years disregarding that with a passion.

Weleski and fellow American artist Jon Rubin are the co-founders of Conflict Kitchen, a takeout restaurant in Pittsburgh that only serves food from countries with which the U.S. government is in conflict.

The restaurant, which opened in 2010, changes its focus and menu to a new trouble spot every few months. It has previously highlighted the food of nations such as Afghanistan, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.

But the restaurant has been cooking up an unprecedented level of interest with the country inspiring its current menu, North Korea, the planet's last Stalinist state whose child despot just executed his uncle supposedly for treason, slow-clapping and watching online porn.

The Conflict Kitchen in Pittsburgh, Penn., specializes in food from countries the U.S. government has difficult relations with. Its current focus is on North Korea. Courtesy of Conflict Kitchen

At Conflict Kitchen, the food is complemented by various cultural events and discussions aimed at improving the understanding of the politics, society and challenges of the chosen country.

To prepare for the North Korea project, Weleski spent time in South Korea, collaborating with the Anyang Public Art Project (APAP), an art organization based in the Gyeonggi Province city, and Jogakbo, a human rights group focused on North Korea-related issues.

After learning North Korean recipes, Weleski and her co-workers went back to Pittsburgh to open the North Korea-themed Conflict Kitchen, titled "Daelip Jubang," which is how "conflict kitchen" is translated into Korean, in November.

The menu includes dishes such as "naengmyeon," or cold buckwheat noodles, "dubu bap," rice cooked with tofu, and "manduguk," the hot and hearty dumpling soup. The restaurant was also re-decorated to convey images of North Korea, with the walls covered with red posters and thick, white Korean letters.

At Conflict Kitchen, the dishes are served with printed interviews of North Korean defectors. At the New York event, the tables were split like there was an invisible DMZ, with one side serving North Korean food and the other side South Korean food.

Weleski came back to Korea recently for a live cooking event with North Korean defectors at APAP on Dec. 6, which was broadcast internationally through Skype.

In an interview with The Korea Times at a coffee shop in Hongdae, Seoul, Weleski explained why North Korea was an obvious choice for Conflict Kitchen.

"Our only interest is for people to create a space for them to be curious and to develop their own opinions," she said.

"Initially, the restaurant was conceived to be a North Korean and South Korean restaurant. We wanted to talk about the conflict between the two nations and also the relationship that the U.S. has with the conflict between the two nations ... (To prepare for the project), we shopped in the market with North Korean defectors and cooked with them."

An American customer of Conflict Kitchen reads the restaurant's
food wrapper that has printed interviews with North Korean defectors.

Putting the purpose in food

According to Weleski, Conflict Kitchen is an attempt to use the social element of food to encourage intelligent debate about different countries and cultures Americans may know little about. The aim was to engage the public in discussions beyond what has been dictated by polarizing, political rhetoric and media headlines.

"Jon Rubin and I wanted to inject the conversation about politics within the public sphere in the post-industrial city of Pittsburgh, Pa. where the only thing the people talk about is sports and weather," said Weleski.

Weleski and Rubin's first project wasn't Conflict Kitchen, but another restaurant called the "Waffle Shop." While the Waffle Shop enjoyed a level of success, after three years the artist duo felt they needed to try something different.

"In the Waffle Shop, we produced a live-streaming talk show with our customers. So people — ranging from kids to adults to elderly people from all races and cultures that we normally would meet in everyday life — would meet on our stage. We had over 10,000 people on our stage back then," said Weleski.

Conflict Kitchen organizers and members of the Korean organizations
APAP and Jogakbo participate in the "The North Korean Cooking Lesson," a live cooking event broadcasted around the world through Skype, at APAP's office in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province, earlier this month.

"Because the Waffle Shop serving food was such a great social lubricant, we thought, ‘Why not create another restaurant that actually competed with our own?"'

They started to serve cuisines from countries that were rarely represented in Pittsburgh restaurants.

"We realized that we were naming cuisines from countries that have a conflict with the U.S. government. That's when the idea for Conflict Kitchen was born," said Weleski.

North Korea is the fifth focus of Conflict Kitchen. The restaurant will continue to serve North Korean food through the spring before moving on to Palestine.

Weleski said there is no set standard for choosing the countries, but the decisions are influenced by geopolitical developments.

The first project was Iranian food simply because Rubin had a working relationship with an Iranian individual with whom he had done another project.

"And then we moved to Afghanistan next because we wanted to have a conversation about a country that shared a border with Iran that was very different from it.

"Most Americans, they don't know the difference between Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran. They don't even know where they are on the map, how we created relationships with them and what the history is. So we wanted to have a close comparison in juxtaposition," said Weleski.

Venezuela and Cuba were next.

"We depend on Venezuela a great deal for oil, yet are not aware of the importance of politics and policies there. Then we moved to Cuba next because there's an interesting triangular relationship between Venezuela, Cuba and United States," she said.

Expanding the conversation

Weeks prior to opening the North Korean edition of the restaurant, Conflict Kitchen participated at an event in New York organized by the non-profit group, Creative Time, where it served both North and South Korean food to 250 people.

The tables at the conference room were divided in two with diners on one side being served only North Korean food and the other side South Korean food.

On the North Korean tables, printed interviews of North Korean defectors conducted by Conflict Kitchen organizers were placed beneath the dishes. On the South Korean side were interviews of South Koreans who were asked how they felt about the Pyongyang regime and North Korean defectors now living in the South.

Weleski said that the New York event was an important experiment in preparing the restaurant in Pittsburgh.

"(In New York) the idea was to split the tables with an invisible Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). We created a situation where food was shared across the table," she said.

Conflict Kitchen currently has borrowed a lot of elements that were tried in New York.

The food items are served wrapped in elegantly-colored papers that are imprinted with the interviews of six North Korean defectors who were asked about six different subjects — "growing up in North Korea," "reunification," "food," "defecting" and "making a life in South Korea." They are stories about personal struggles that are rarely found in mainstream media coverage.

"This might be the first time that we are really connecting with the countries that are so far from what American citizens know about beyond the media," said Weleski.

"We always try to put different viewpoints. For example, when we presented the information of Afghanistan, one interviewee said, ‘I think that after 9/11, the destiny of the U.S. and Afghanistan became linked with each other to maintain security and deter any terrorist attacks to the U.S. The presence of the U.S. in Afghanistan is essential.' But anther interviewee said, ‘The U.S. presence is an occupation force supporting a government not considered legitimate by the majority of the population.'"

Weleski said that the help from APAP and Jogakbo was critical in launching the North Korean Conflict Kitchen. The groups have been involved with the project since the summer and put Weleski in touch with the North Korean defectors who were eager to share the food culture of their birth country.

"We first thought that Conflict Kitchen, run by two American artists, might observe the Korean situation superficially from the American point of view, but it proved to be something much more than that," said Kwon Jin, APAP's curatorial director.

"We introduced a number of North Korean defectors to Conflict Kitchen with the help of Jogakbo, a cultural community built around 50 North Korean defectors and their South Korean friends. We held a meeting in August where North Korean defectors passed the recipes for dubu bap, manduguk and ‘haemul pajeon' (fried pancakes with seafood and scallion) to Conflict Kitchen chefs. Then they regrouped for the Skype event."

Kim Sook-im, the head of Jogakbo, said that the North Korean defectors participating in the project were eager to share their personal stories along with their food advice.

"The defectors were influential in choosing the menus. The food proved to be an effective medium for them to tell their personal stories, some of them starting from simple things like, ‘We have these kinds of food on that holiday,"' Kim said.

"We believe Conflict Kitchen is a very important project in improving the understanding of North Korea and North Koreans to Americans. It's not important whether the particular Conflict Kitchen visitor has a positive or negative opinion about North Korea. What's important is providing an opportunity for ideas to be shared and reduce misinformation, prejudice and simple demonization."

Na Mi-hyun, a North Korean defector who participated in the Conflict Kitchen project said, "We told our personal stories, not the difficult and complicated political issues. I believe our stories will make emotional connections with the readers and raise awareness for human rights issues in North Korea."

Jogakbo has been actively involved in providing North Korean defectors a platform of communication through food. It had operated a small restaurant, called "Cafe Bo," in Seongbuk-dong, where diners could discuss North Korea-related topics with defectors.

The restaurant closed due to financial problems. Thankfully, Conflict Kitchen seems to be on a safer course for success.

"It's amazing how much people want to talk when you offer or lend an ear to listen," Weleski said.

She says that Conflict Kitchen will continue to be devoted to serving food with a purpose of advancing discourse. Any country can be a candidate.

"For example, Switzerland isn't in conflict with anyone, so they wouldn't have a conflict kitchen. However Switzerland cut themselves off to the immigrant population. They are not letting people in anymore. So there's a real conflict between immigrants within Switzerland and Swiss nationals," she said.