PHOTO: Seiami Kim Amoda
Jungwon Kim
is a writer and cultural organizer who explores transgenerational grief, public memory, and communal healing.
highlights
Trauma expert Linda Thai and writer Jungwon Kim engage in an in-depth conversation on intergenerational trauma, historical grief, and healing in community. Together, they explore the reverberations of historical violence across generations, framed within the context of U.S. wars in Korea and Vietnam, yet deeply relevant to other conflicts past and present. And they explore modes of restoration often overlooked by Western therapeutic approaches: somatic and communal transmutation, cultural ritual, and narrative healing. The pathways they share honor the deep connections between personal, historical, and communal dimensions of trauma.
“We must ritualize the healing, not the trauma.”
“The Grief Keepers: Meet the community of survivors and activists behind South Korea’s first national war memorial for civilians,” The Conversationalist, October 22, 2026.
“KPop Demon Hunters: A Roadmap Through Korean Historical Grief and Healing,” Crush Life Manifesto, January 2026
core themes ANIMATINg current & past work
한
Han is a Korean word for the embodied experience of unresolved collective grief/rage resulting from historical violence. It is closely related to intergenerational trauma. My current work explores han as a liberatory framework for narrative justice and cross-cultural solidarity.흥
Heung refers to an exhilarating, maximal joy that provides catharsis for accumulated han stored in the heart-mind-body. In older texts, heung is often mentioned in the context of being with close friends.정
Jeong describes the web of kinship and responsibility that connects the self with all other beings. To know jeong is to feel a deep sense of belonging.
Unbind Your Heart intergenerational grief transmutation ceremony. Photo: Seiami Kim-Amoda (2023)bio
Jungwon Kim is a writer and cultural organizer. She is also a communications leader, organizational strategy consultant, and journalist who has dedicated her professional life to human rights and environmental advocacy. As a Soros Equality Fellow, she produced a cross-cultural healing model in collaboration with ritual practitioners and clinicians to address historical grief. Head of Creative & Editorial at the Rainforest Alliance, she directed a multimedia team of writers, videographers, and graphic designers. Earlier in her career, she served as the editor of Amnesty International, a human rights quarterly magazine featuring the work of award-winning journalists and documentary photographers (print circulation 300,000). She began her storytelling career as a newspaper reporter, magazine editor, and on-air correspondent for nationally syndicated public radio programs.
Through her consulting practice, Next Wave, she offers wisdom-based impact strategies (social, environmental, narrative), facilitates retreats, and provides mindfulness-based leadership coaching to individuals. Jungwon currently serves as the board chair of Peace Is Loud, a nonprofit organization that builds narrative impact in the documentary film sector, and was a two-term board member for the Fund for Public Health NYC, which works to build racial and socioeconomic equity in public health outcomes. She did her undergraduate and graduate studies (B.A. Philosophy, dual M.J./M.A. program in Journalism and East Asian Studies) at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in support of her research on self-censorship in the Hong Kong news media, a Foreign Language Area Fellowship, and a Korea Foundation Fellowship.
Jungwon is the mother of two young adults, co-founder of two liberation-centered sanghas in the socially engaged Buddhist tradition of Thích Nhất Hạnh, an amateur musician, and a late-blooming surfer.
Photo: Sloan AsakuraHONORS
Blue Mountain Center writer in residence
McCormack Writing Center (formerly Tin House Workshop) Winter Workshop
Baldwin for the Arts Fellow
Soros Equality Fellow
Mesa Refuge writer in residence
Looking Glass Arts writer in residence
Fulbright Fellow
East Asian Studies Fellow
Korea Foundation Fellow
media & Public talks
“Joy and Sorrow, Love and Rage: What the Korean concept of han can teach us about working with our anger more effectively,” Tricyle Buddhist Review 2024
“Transmuting Generational Grief,” Tricyle Talks Podcast 2024:
“How to locate yourself within ecosystems of transformation,” Dark Properties 2024
“My Spiritual Practice and the Climate Crisis,” Rubin Museum Spiral Magazine 2020
“The Power of Hope in a Changing Climate,” Rubin Museum 2019
“Climate Positivity at Scale,” The New York Times Center 2022