The air is turning crisp, and the nights are getting longer. The foliage of trees lining the streets turn ember and gold in the sun. Fall in South Korea is beautiful. As the season slowly slips into winter and little girls substitute their shoes for boots, the women of each neighborhood gather in the early winter sun for kimjang. Kimjang is an occasion where kimchi is made in large quantities to last through the winter. The kimchi-making secrets are passed down from grandmothers to mothers, who would pass it onto daughters and daughters-in-law. Learning the unique taste of each family’s kimchi is how daughters-in-law bonded with her new family. Old and young would gather, each taking on different roles of washing, chopping, salting, and seasoning the vegetables. But most importantly, the concoctions are mixed by hand and tasted before they are stored in large, earthen pots and stored underground to ferment through the cold season.
Kimchi, a dish made from fermented vegetables, most commonly the napa cabbage and red pepper, began as a solution to Korea’s long, harsh winter where vegetables were hard to grow. It is believed to have started as early as 37 BC and 7 AD. Of course, its ingredients have changed over time as well. Kimchi began as a simple affair consisting of pickled radishes. While the history of how other vegetables made its way to become a kimchi staple is blurred, the commonly accepted version is that trade and globalization and partly Japan’s colonization of Korea brought the napa cabbages and red pepper into the country.
Kimchi is served with every traditional Korean meal and its ingredients is perhaps as flexible as it is loved. With time, the consumption of Kimchi has also evolved. It is now consumed throughout the year and can be easily bought in stores like a cup of ramen. Vegetables are also now cultivated under new technological thingamabobs through the winter. However, for Koreans who grew up in a different time, the days of kimjang in late fall remains fond memories. Jang Sun Hee, who grew up in Incheon and now lives in Oakland recalls that the kimjang days were when matchmaking and marriages would conspire over exchanges of recipes and seasonings. Lee Hyun Joo also recalls how her mother would one day have heated arguments with their neighbor and then spend the next making kimchi and laughing together.
Strangely, while kimchi consumption is dropping in South Korea over the last few years, it is steadily rising across the world. The tangy, fizzy side-dish is perhaps on its way to world domination.
