Kimchi Season

While far from dying out, the Korean practice of "kimgjang" or making fresh kimchi in late fall, is being challenged by an abundance of store-made options:

"While the more affordable option is to buy bulk-made kimchi from one of the market leaders - such as Daesang or CJ Cheiljedang - some are choosing other options. Among many kimchi masters who sell their product through social media accounts, Park Kwang-hee of PKH Food, who uses the title 'Art of Kimchi Mama,' is getting the most attention. Alongside making the ordinary baechu kimchi, made with cabbage, or ggakdugi, made with white radish, she has used a variety of vegetables available in Pyeongchang, Gangwon, where she lives, including dandelion. She has studied and researched different types of kimchi for decades. She said thinking outside the box to make kimchi with items that people don’t commonly recognize as main kimchi ingredients sells well. Some of the modern Korean restaurants, including the recently opened Myomi, serve Park’s kimchi as banchan, a side dish that commonly comes with rice and soup. With more and more locals buying her kimchi, her packages have become a gift to bring when people go overseas. She has started to export her kimchi to Europe. 

As kimjang, the kimchi making culture registered with Unesco since 2013, is now endangered, many cultural institutions are rolling up their sleeves to keep the tradition alive. At the the fifth annual Seoul Kimchi Festival earlier this month, over 3,000 gathered to making kimchi together, aiming to break the Guinness Book of World Records. The previous record for the number of people making kimchi together was 2,635. Schools and regional governments hold smaller events to draw locals in the neighborhood so they can better understand kimjang. People can just come and go whenever they want, without being at the kimjang event from the very start to the end."

I like the store-made stuff just fine but as a foreigner my palate isn't really advanced enough to notice flavor differences in various kimchi types.  But taking a cab or bus downtown and passing a local church or hospital where 20 Korean aunties are out making kimchi together, clad in plastic gloves and sun visors, is a pretty iconic (and welcome) image this time of year.