Why ‘Kim’s Convenience’ Is ‘Quietly Revolutionary’

In not explaining every detail of Korean food culture, the award-winning Canadian sitcom speaks volumes.

In the second episode of the television show “Kim’s Convenience,” there’s a moment that has always stuck with Diane Paik. Umma, the matriarch of the Kim family, arrives at the apartment of her estranged son, Jung, carrying containers of kimbap. It’s not a particularly pivotal scene, but it immediately brought Ms. Paik, 30, a senior social media manager for the men’s grooming company Harry’s, back to the many times her own parents drove 10 hours from their home in West Bloomfield, Mich., to her apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, always with their homemade kimchi in tow.