{"id":6214,"date":"2026-05-06T20:21:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T20:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/6214\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T20:21:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T20:21:13","slug":"mouth-watering-korean-food-at-centre-of-docuseries-our-ocean-table","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/6214\/","title":{"rendered":"Mouth-watering Korean food at centre of docuseries Our Ocean Table"},"content":{"rendered":"

An \u2018ah-ha\u2019 moment led marine\u00a0biologist<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Korean<\/a> Canadian\u00a0filmmaker<\/a> Sonya Lee to her latest project, the docuseries Our Ocean Table.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worked on other people\u2019s ocean<\/a>\u00a0stories,\u00a0and I always felt like it must be really nice to have an ocean<\/a> culture and\u00a0to\u00a0be so connected to the ocean without realizing I actually came from an ocean culture,\u201d said\u00a0Victoria\u2019s\u00a0Lee, a National Geographic Explorer\u00a0<\/a>who says her\u00a0favourite\u00a0place is to be underwater.<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

Sonya Lee, a National Geographic Explorer, marine biologist and filmmaker, set out to rediscover her Korean roots with help from the ocean. Her journey is chronicled in the new docuseries Our Ocean Table that she co-hosts with Hannah Sung.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had the realization when I was making Korean food and noticing there\u2019s so much seafood \u2026 Once I realized that it just kind of snowballed into being, \u2018Wow, if we don\u2019t take care of these ingredients, we actually won\u2019t be able to eat our cultural foods.\u2019 And then it went from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The three-part docuseries sees Lee and her co-host, cultural journalist and former MuchMusic VJ Hannah Sung, rediscovering their Korean roots and exploring how traditional Korean seafood dishes connect to the environment \u2014 and the importance of conservation and sustainability in preserving those links.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does it mean for our culture if our food disappears?\u201d asks Lee in the series that premieres on May 1 on demand on Telus Optik TV, and streams on Telus Stream+ and CBC Gem.<\/p>\n

The answer is served up with the help of Korean Canadian chefs, sustainable harvesters and community leaders from Vancouver, Vancouver Island and Calgary.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always want that extra little tidbit of, \u2018OK, you\u2019re telling me all about all these amazing ingredients and all of these amazing dishes, but what\u2019s actually the state of this amazing prawn or, this seafood ingredient that you\u2019re showing me?\u2019 \u201d said Lee, who co-directed Our Ocean Table with Vancouver\u2019s Jon Chiang. \u201cWhat is happening to it? Can we keep eating it forever?\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee hopes the series will also help remove some of the negativity\u00a0and blame\u00a0that\u00a0she says has\u00a0been\u00a0assigned to\u00a0Asian cultures when it comes to environmental practices.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the conservation media spaces that I work in, often East Asians are the bad guys. The over-fishers, the poachers and the wildlife traffickers. And as somebody who is East Asian, I always found it really difficult, because I know that that\u2019s just one side of the story,\u201d said Lee, who is currently working on a short film with Vancouver Chef Jay Park, the winner of the gold medal at the 2026 Canadian Culinary Championship, and one of the chefs highlighted in Our Ocean Table. \u201cThere are amazing scientists and conservationists in our culture as well. We just don\u2019t see them.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo,\u00a0one of the\u00a0big things\u00a0I would love people to see is that East Asian cultures also have a strong tie to the ocean and to the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our Ocean Table is Lee\u2019s first time in front of the camera after years of working on other documentaries for the CBC, NFB, PBS, National Geographic and others. For this move into the frame, she wanted a partner to work with, and reached out to Sung, who Lee grew up watching on MuchMusic in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

Hannah Sung, left, and Sonya Lee have teamed up to present the new docuseries Our Ocean Table. The three-part series has the hosts dive into their personal and professional experiences as they reconnect with Korean roots and eat well while also learning more about sustainable fisheries. Photo: The Jugaad sisters<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this concept of an Eonni, which is like older sister in Korean. She very much felt like an Eonni,\u201d said Lee about Sung. \u201cI really wanted somebody else there with me, and I really trusted Hannah to do that. And she was very gracious enough to come on the journey with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pair initially met in the early days of COVID-19, when Lee slid into Sung\u2019s DMs to talk about their shared love of Korean pop culture, particularly the hugely popular Korean boy band BTS.<\/p>\n

\u201cSonya and I became friends, and we just kept up our chats. And then, whenever she came through Toronto, we\u2019d meet up for lunch. And then this opportunity came up for her to create this series,\u201d said Sung. \u201cShe called me up and said, \u2018Hannah, I don\u2019t want to do it alone. Will you do this with me?\u2019 And at first, it was just an idea that was barely put on paper. I said, \u2018Sure. why not?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Sung, who currently works in communications, admitted she was nervous about returning to an on-camera role. And she was also a bit reticent of exposing herself on a personal level.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was kind of nervous about exploring my own relationship with Korean culture and my identity on-camera, in a public way,\u201d said Sung. \u201cIt\u2019s something that can feel so private, or for a very inner circle, when we\u2019re talking about these kinds of issues. But I quickly got over that because I feel it is so important to talk about things out loud.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Korean-themed series like Our Ocean Table is just another addition to the global surge in popularity of everything Korean. Known as Hallyu, a.k.a. Korean wave, everything from food to skin care to pop culture juggernauts like BTS, Blackpink, Squid Games and the wildly popular K-Pop Demon Hunters have crossed cultural borders.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not cool to be Korean when I was growing up, but\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0cool to be Korean now,\u201d said Lee.<\/p>\n

Sung\u00a0adds that not all cool Korean stuff\u00a0is imported.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also love the stuff that is made by the Korean diaspora,\u201d said Sung. \u201cWe all know (K-pop Demon Hunters director Maggie Kang) is Korean Canadian, and she made it in America. And that\u2019s what I\u2019m so proud of with this series, Our Ocean Table, is that we\u2019re Korean Canadian, and we\u2019re talking about Canadian locations. We have our own sensibility that is Canadian.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was born and raised here, but my heritage, obviously, is Korean. And I\u2019m deeply curious about all things Korean. But I\u2019m never going to be a Korean Korean. I\u2019m different. So, I love seeing all the content that\u2019s coming from this generation of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dgee@postmedia.com\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An \u2018ah-ha\u2019 moment led marine\u00a0biologist\u00a0and\u00a0Korean Canadian\u00a0filmmaker Sonya Lee to her latest project, the docuseries Our Ocean Table. \u201cI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5063,171,5065,4974,5066,5064],"class_list":{"0":"post-6214","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-korea","8":"tag-hannah-sung","9":"tag-korean","10":"tag-korean-canadian","11":"tag-korean-food","12":"tag-ocean","13":"tag-sonya-lee"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}