Health is about clearing your internal pathways, a concept at Eastern medicine’s core. We help our bodies and minds repair daily when we clear obstructions that impede functioning. This includes assisting our bodies in digesting and absorbing nutrients in the ways that we eat. For example, we should make sure we ingest foods with natural digestive enzymes that help us break down the foods effectively. Enabling blood circulation throughout the body or clearing negative emotions are other vital examples.
As a part of my series about “authors who are making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Michelle Jungmin Bang.
Michelle Jungmin Bang is an award-winning eco-entrepreneur, Chivas Venture Social Impact Fellow, and Harvard Business School graduate. A Korean-American from New York City, she spent 16 years in Asia exploring centuries-old wellness traditions, which she chronicles in her new book Sun & Ssukgat: The Korean Art of Self-Care, Wellness & Longevity (Harvest; on-sale: February 25, 2025), a guide to eco-conscious living inspired by her journey and research in Korea and Asia. Michelle is the co-founder and founding CEO of The R Collective, a sustainable fashion brand repurposing high-end materials into affordable luxury. Passionate about social impact, she serves as a board director for GrowNYC and has shared her insights at organizations like Google.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I was born and raised in Brooklyn. My father is a doctor, trained in Korea at (SNUCM) Seoul National University College of Medicine; my mother is a math teacher who attended New York University on scholarship after raising my siblings and me. I spent my childhood, often with family friends who were SNUCM doctors, with the shared experience of immigrating to the US from Korea. Together, our families cultivated an Americanized persona. There was a feeling that we had to assimilate seamlessly into American life, with our parents and grandparents very quickly conquering English to succeed and survive in a new country.
Raised among this extended family of Korean doctors, I was exposed very early on to the practical applications in medicine, like using whole foods and holistic measures to recover from surgery, colds, pregnancies, and injuries. I didn’t realize the importance of these lessons from my Korean heritage until I began my healing journey after experiencing a medical crisis while living and raising a family in Asia for two decades (and counting).
As a child, I was very artistic, always making things and crafting; I was also very musical, playing the piano and the oboe, and I almost attended music school professionally. I had studied to go into medicine, intending to follow in my father’s footsteps, but I later decided to pursue the industry’s business side within healthcare investment banking.
In many ways, Sun & Ssukgat, my upcoming illustrated Korean health book, is a surprising culmination of my early creative inclinations and experiences with healthcare, medicine, and Korean heritage. The book and my journey became a delightfully unexpected homecoming for me.
When you were younger, was there a book that you read that inspired you to take action or changed your life? Can you share a story about that?
In Korean culture, the idea of Jeong is ever-present. If you were to find the meaning of Jeong in English, you would have to combine many words at once: love, friendship, empathy, compassion, sincerity, loyalty, sacrifice, community, connection, vulnerability, affection, sympathy, warmth, passion, kindness, social responsibility, and generosity of spirit toward humankind. Jeong is a collective call to Koreans to help one another, even if they are strangers.
As a child, I cherished a beautifully illustrated book that embodied this concept of Jeong. It told an old Korean folktale, “Heungbu and Nolbu.” In the tale, Heungbu, the kinder of two brothers, comes upon a baby swallow with a broken leg. Heungbu protects the swallow from a snake and brings it home to care for it until it is strong enough to fly. Later, the swallow returns with a gift — a seed — which grows into three enormous pumpkins. When Heungbu cuts the pumpkins open, he is shocked to find riches and treasures beyond his imagination within them. The moral of the tale is that in Korean culture, Jeong is valued and revered, and we should follow Heungbu’s example of kindness and generosity, especially those who might be a helpless creature like the swallow.
I didn’t realize until I wrote Sun & Ssukgat how my parents instilled Jeong in me, whether by reading this book to me as a child or showing me through their deep involvement in the Korean community. Outside of their chosen professions, they led organizations and causes to encourage more Asian representation in media or to help fellow immigrants to professionalize. As I grew up, I began trying to adopt the same Jeong traits, helping to drive change through the social impact initiatives and trying to embody the change I wish to see in the world, as Nelson Mandela once said.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
One of the funniest mistakes I made on my first research trip to a Korean Buddhist hermitage was not packing enough warm clothes and having to huddle every night on the ondol, or traditional floors. For two decades, I have been living in Hong Kong, a sub-tropical climate that is hot, sticky, and humid for most of the year. We have torrential storms and monsoons, but we never experience snow or frigid weather. Here I was on a remote mountainside during winter, sleeping in a minimalistic lodge amongst the nuns, the only source of heat from the ondol. The ondols employ a traditional — and clever — method of manipulating the flow of smoke horizontally from fireplaces, allowing fire from the kitchen to simultaneously enable cooking and home heating, while also keeping homes hygienic by discouraging dust accumulation. Interestingly, ondols made such an impression on the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright that he built them into his own home and buildings. The lesson learned is to remember that even if a country is a short flight away, it will have unique differences and weather patterns. Always bring layers!
Can you describe how you aim to make a significant social impact with your book?
For millennia, Korean families have passed down well-being wisdom generationally, but as an increasing number of Koreans adopt a modern lifestyle, this wisdom is fading. I wrote Sun & Ssukgat to help preserve this wisdom before its healing presence slips away from our modern world. But I also truly believe that embracing new science while preserving the old ways of living — eating local, eating in season, eating real food, reconnecting to nature — could solve many pressing issues our world faces today, such as chronic disease, climate change, and food waste.
According to the WHO, over 70% of chronic illnesses stem from preventable conditions with lifestyle changes. I strongly believe that by preserving these nourishing traditions, which are natural, effective, and environmentally conscious, we can radically shift our healthcare philosophies towards self-care or preventative care rather than waiting after symptoms arrive when our conditions may be irreversible.
Also, embracing plant diversity does so much for the planet and for our health. Around 60% of our food consumption in the US focuses on a mere three crops: wheat, rice, and corn. This depletes our soil from growing healthy food and misses an estimated 300,000 edible plants that traditional diets employ.
Finally, a third of our food production is wasted, and half of this waste stems from our homes. Using the whole plant method — the way we used to prepare food, from flower to root and peels — activates the full nutritional power of the entire plant, while also helping us avoid waste.
Can you share with us the most interesting story that you shared in your book?
There are many fascinating people I have met and learned from. On Jeju Island, 50 miles south of the Korean peninsula, a dormant volcano looms at its center. It is home to residents who yearn for its crystal-clear waters and wild, unbridled nature, largely untouched by human hands. There, I met a wonderful ecosystem of people eating and living with the seasons, in congruence with the old ways of living.
One man, Mr. Hwang, was an inspiring figure for me. He had reversed his Type 2 diabetes and regained his vision, learning to use the powers of plant nutrition through traditional Korean cooking and nature therapy together with his family. They eat seaweed and seafood foraged by haenyeo the Korean female free divers, and cook with indigenous plants and fruit, using organic, unprocessed ingredients.
Prior to visiting Mr. Hwang, I had heard of many incredible recoveries of those who had reversed their conditions using natural methods, such as a Korean Buddhist nun who reversed her lung cancer; Dr. Terry Wahls, who reversed her progressive multiple sclerosis; mycologist Paul Stamet, who helped his mother reverse Stage IV breast cancer; and even Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ three-month return to the field after tearing an Achilles heel. For me, seeing Mr. Hwang with my own eyes and learning from him validated how powerful this healing could be.
What was the “aha moment” or series of events that made you decide to bring your message to the greater world? Can you share a story about that?
After I was admitted to the emergency room for bleeding ulcers, I began to feel sick all the time and could not eat without excruciating pain. I was puzzled because, before that hospital visit, I was rarely ill.
One morning, while walking along Hong Kong’s Stanley Beach and thinking about my ongoing predicament, I watched a group of seniors gathering in bathing suits. At first, seeing their energy and supple skin, I thought they were young athletes, but when I approached them, I realized they were all far older and silvered-haired. They had coordinated an outdoor activity together, alternating between doing vigorous laps in the ocean and deep, bare-footed body stretches on the beach. On another morning, I caught a sweet grandmother wielding a huge sword for exercise outside. These were examples of the average person living healthily in Asia and employing natural methods.
At the same time, my husband, who had grown up in a traditional Chinese household, cooked the healing foods that he had grown up with. He was embodying this old way of living and trying to help me recover in ways his parents and grandparents had taught him.
It dawned on me that I was living on a continent that breathed another way of life, using food as medicine, and out of curiosity, I decided to interview people around me. I thought at the time that I would spend a year doing this, but as I saw so many of my high-achieving friends and colleagues getting sick around me, living the kind of lifestyle I used to lead, that one year turned into many. I began to conduct extended interviews, focus groups, and surveys. Then, I traveled and enrolled in two separate programs for functional food and preventative care, which extended into mother and baby care and healthy aging.
What I was seeing with my own eyes in Asia was so different from the narrative I had been exposed to in the US growing up — that age equated to mental and physical decline and that wellness was overwhelming and required a big budget and strict protocols. I knew I had to find a way to share what I was learning with everyone. So, I wrote Sun & Ssukgat.
Without sharing specific names, can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
I spoke at a large conference, sharing the insights behind Sun & Ssukgat for the first time. The best part of this event for me was connecting with those who heard my message and seeing how it had changed them. I was floored when audience members found me after to let me know how my talk inspired hope, inspiration, and new ideas. They were repeating their learned lessons about tackling health spans (the length of time we get to be healthy, not just alive), terrain-based living (as opposed to germ theory), and the importance of using the whole plant. A guest at the event invited me to her home the next day for a homemade and homegrown meal to discuss what I had learned. That experience underpinned the importance of sharing my message: that we can radically change our well-being philosophies to prevent decline, to care for ourselves, and to preserve old wisdom as humanity continues forward with new science and new discoveries in medicine.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
Policies and health insurance coverage could be adapted to promote and include preventative health measures; this includes public recommendations on what Americans should eat and how to live a healthy lifestyle. For example, the Korean food pyramid includes a foundation of daily movement and community. This is missing from the American food pyramid and guidelines.
I would also love to see more research on natural methods that impact human health positively. The foundation of traditional diets and lifestyle has promoted many things that we are only now uncovering, including how a plant-diverse diet captures the more-than-10,000 different phytochemical components and how we as humans live with a microbiome — an ecosystem of bacteria that is supported by rewilding with fermented foods and time outdoors. We still don’t understand these things fully. Only recently, a report uncovered that the human brain is teeming with microbes, and now, scientists are beginning to suspect they could play a role in neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease.
Finally, health education can start earlier for children. In Korea, babies are introduced to fermented foods and seaweeds at six months old, and this healthy food education extends throughout their lives. In Korea, school children and professionals are provided with plant-diverse lunches in cafeterias. Healthy foods are even sold at fast convenience stores and offered as street food throughout Asia.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
Leadership means creating an environment where people can grow, feel safe, and shine with their natural talents. Organizations grow best when everyone is weighing in with a diversity of intelligent and creative ideas and when people are invested and aligned with the organization. Leadership is not about doing it all yourself.
I’ve also learned through Sun & Ssukgat that leadership means taking good care of yourself. So often, leaders are focused on service — for their mission, for their teams, and for their families — but sustained leadership requires self-care. After all, we are humans, not machines. Leaders can be role models in taking intermittent breaks for their emotional, intellectual, and physical well-being, so everyone is encouraged to be at their best.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why?
Self-care or preventative care is wide-ranging, but these are five things I wish someone had told me when I first started my journey.
1. Health is about clearing your internal pathways, a concept at Eastern medicine’s core. We help our bodies and minds repair daily when we clear obstructions that impede functioning. This includes assisting our bodies in digesting and absorbing nutrients in the ways that we eat. For example, we should make sure we ingest foods with natural digestive enzymes that help us break down the foods effectively. Enabling blood circulation throughout the body or clearing negative emotions are other vital examples.
2. What you eat on an empty stomach is very important to control cravings, weight, and gut health. I have switched from waking up to my old favorite breakfast of sweetened coffee and an almond croissant to espresso without sugar and a savory breakfast, which often includes dinner leftovers, replete with protein, probiotic-rich sauerkraut or kimchi, and/or vegetables. Before this, I wake up to hydrate with plain water, because sleep dehydrates you, and sometimes, I include salt and lemon if I need a boost of electrolytes or Vitamin C.
3. The way we function is interconnected. In Eastern medicine, this deals with how humans interact with the Earth and universe and how our human frames are linked; if something happens in one part of our body, it will affect another. What happens in the mind — for example, what we experience during traumatic moments — will manifest in the body if we don’t fully process any negative emotions experienced.
4. The body has its own internal medicines to help heal you. You can release these simply by sweating and moving every day. I start my day with a quick and sweaty hot yoga session. I also make sure I get daily steps in, whether walking to my destination or even doing something as simple as cleaning my house. Humans weren’t meant to sit at a computer all day, as we now do. We can encourage movement by getting up to stretch, taking a little walk — especially after meals — or going outside for lunch. Any small movement helps.
5. Manage stress so it’s not chronic. A little bit of stress is fine and can provide you with the adrenaline you need to reach a finish line. However, chronic stress can lead to inflammation and disease. After watching free divers in Korea, I learned to mind my breath, and now, even if I’m standing in line at the post office or working at my desk, I’ll take a moment to take a deep breath, and I can feel my stress and body tension melt away in seconds. It’s such an easy hack that anyone can do.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Lucy Maud Montgomery once wrote, “Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?” It’s one of my favorite quotes because I am by no means perfect, and it reminds me that no matter what happens to me today, I will always have the opportunity to start fresh and make positive changes the next day.
In a 2014 study conducted at the University of Pittsburgh, scientists set out to understand why African Americans had rates of colon cancer 12 times higher than rural South Africans. For a mere two weeks, the researchers effectively swapped the diets of 20 African Americans (previously high in fat intake with meat and cheese) and twenty South Africans (on a traditional African diet, high in fiber and low in fat, with little meat and plenty of vegetables, beans, and cornmeal). They found that even within this short time, the participants’ microbiomes altered considerably. Those on the traditional African diet increased the production of butyrate, a fatty acid proven to protect against colon cancer, while those on the American diet developed biomarkers in their gut that were presets for cancer.
Perhaps more fascinating, according to scientists at Harvard and the University of California, large microbial shifts can occur within the body in as little as 24 hours, demonstrating the remarkable flexibility of our human response to diet. As L.M. Montgomery said, tomorrow is always a new day, and we can start fresh; for me, this provides hope that we always have the opportunity to improve, no matter where we are starting from.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
I would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with Michelle Obama. I am enamored with her work to promote children’s health by providing healthier food in schools, increasing physical activity, and improving food labeling. Her children’s cooking show on Netflix, “Waffles + Mochi,” is brilliant. I love how the child-friendly characters travel the world to learn how to cook with fresh ingredients from different cultures. I am in absolute alignment with her that food and health literacy needs to be taught early in life, just as it’s done in Korea and throughout Asia. I’d love to collaborate with Michelle Obama on her work or appear on “Waffles + Mochi” one day!
How can our readers further follow your work online?
My book, Sun & Ssukgat: The Korean Art of Self-Care, Wellness & Longevity, launches on February 25, 2025.
Sun & Ssukgat follows one person’s journey to heal. This book is an homage to my Korean heritage and two decades in Asia. In its pages, you’ll find inspiring people who live their best lives using natural means predicated on the old ways of living; free divers who continue to live strong, foraging and protecting the ocean through their 90s; Buddhist nuns who unlock the secrets of temple food; health patterns I found across China, Japan, and Korea; and steamy, ice cold and budget-friendly sauna house methods that match the best luxury spas in the world. My book posits that we can embrace new science while preserving the old ways of living to help solve many pressing issues our modern world faces today.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
Social Impact Authors: How & Why Michelle Jungmin Bang Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.