A day without kimchi?



Hard to imagine. Kimchi takes up a very important part of the dietary life of Koreans. We eat it every day in every meal but never once are we fed up with it. We eat it all our life. We think something is missing when there is no kimchi on the dining table. While bap (boiled rice), which is the main diet, can be replaced with something else, nothing can take the place of kimchi. There is always kimchi no matter what the main dish is - when they are drinking, when they are eating Korean rice bread, or meat, or noodles or dimsum to replace bap. A hearty meal with every delicacy is incomplete without kimchi. This is part of the reason why Koreans feel troubled when they stay for a long time in a foreign country where there is no kimchi available.

Having meals without kimchi was a serious problem for the early Korean emigrants. The first generation of the Korean settlers in the U.S., Japan, China, and Russia tried to solve the problem by forming small Korean communities. They grew Korean breed of vegetables like Chinese cabbage, radish, chili and garlic, and made kimchi together. When growing Korean breed was not possible, they made kimchi from what they could get in the region. Of course it was not quite the same as what they used to have before they left Korea, but this was how they tried in every possible way to get kimchi. This is how kimchi spread around the world.

Now kimchi is getting more and more popular among foreigners thanks to these emigrants. Also the number of foreign people is increasing who look for Korean restaurants or kimchi products.


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