On a sweltering summer day, standing in front of an open refrigerator and wondering what to cook for dinner is a familiar routine. When my appetite fades in the summer heat, something hidden in the back of the refrigerator often comes to the rescue: well-aged kimchi, or mukeunji, left from the previous winter.
Fresh kimchi has a crisp texture and bright flavor, but deeply aged kimchi works especially well in dishes that are simmered for a long time. One of my favorites is godeungeo kimchijjim, braised aged kimchi with mackerel.
I place aged cabbage kimchi in a pot, add a light anchovy and kelp broth, and let it simmer until the leaves become soft. Mackerel goes on top, and the kimchi absorbs the flavor of the fish while the fish takes on the sour, rich taste of the fermented cabbage.
Whenever I eat a dish like this in summer, it reminds me that the kimchi on the table began months earlier, during the cold-weather season of Kimjang.
A Military Bathhouse: Where My First Kimjang Began
Growing up, Kimjang was something the adults handled while children mostly stayed out of the way. My first real hands-on experience with it did not happen at home. It happened in late autumn, shortly after I was assigned to my military unit as a young recruit.
Our Kimjang began in the unit’s communal bathhouse. After a tiled tub large enough for about fifteen soldiers had been thoroughly cleaned, it was filled with water and coarse salt. Hundreds of halved napa cabbages were placed in the brine and turned several times so that they would salt evenly.
The next day, soldiers lined up to rinse the cabbages and spread the red seasoning mixture between the leaves. The finished kimchi was packed into heavy plastic bags, placed inside large sacks, and stored in large drums buried in the ground behind the mess hall.
It took a great deal of work, and many people in the unit participated. That experience became both my first military Kimjang and my last. By the following year, my unit had stopped making its own kimchi and was receiving commercially produced kimchi instead.
Family Traditions and the Modern Shift in Kimjang Culture
Years after leaving the military, Kimjang became part of my life again after marriage. My own family had not made particularly large amounts of kimchi, but my mother-in-law held a much bigger annual Kimjang gathering.
We spread large plastic mats on the floor, put on red rubber gloves, and sat together seasoning the salted cabbage leaves. One of the best parts came while the work was still going on: eating fresh kimchi with slices of newly boiled pork, or bossam.
That combination still reminds me of Kimjang. The cabbage has not yet developed the sourness of fermented kimchi, so it is crisp and fresh, while the pork is still warm.
Today, many households no longer make the large quantities of kimchi that previous generations did. The work takes time, families are smaller, and good commercially produced kimchi is available throughout the year. Buying kimchi has therefore become completely normal in many Korean homes.
Even so, kimchi itself has certainly not disappeared from everyday meals. It remains one of the most familiar foods on a Korean table alongside rice, soup, and everyday dishes such as Korean vegetable side dishes, or namul.
A cozy scene from last year’s Kimjang at our countryside home, where family members gathered under the porch to season freshly brined cabbages together.
Sharing and Community: The UNESCO Spirit of Kimjang Culture
Traditionally, Kimjang was often a collective task. In many families and communities, relatives and neighbors helped one another with the large amount of work required to prepare enough kimchi for winter.
One way of understanding this cooperation is through pumasi, the traditional practice of exchanging labor. People could help with another household’s work and later receive help in return. Kimjang was well suited to this kind of cooperation because salting, washing, seasoning, carrying, and storing large quantities of cabbage was much easier with several people.
The food was shared as well as the labor. Families exchanged kimchi, ate together during the work, and often gave some of the finished kimchi to relatives or neighbors.
This communal aspect is an important reason Kimjang is regarded as more than a recipe. In 2013, UNESCO inscribed Kimjang, making and sharing kimchi in the Republic of Korea on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, emphasizing the way the practice strengthens family cooperation and the sharing of knowledge between households.
The same idea can still be seen today even as fewer households make their own winter supply. Every year, local organizations, charities, companies, religious groups, and volunteers hold Kimjang events and distribute the finished kimchi to people who need it. The scale and setting have changed, but the association between Kimjang and sharing has not disappeared.
How Heading Cabbage Became the Standard for Kimjang
Kimjang itself is much older than the type of large, tightly packed napa cabbage most Koreans use today.
Earlier Korean cabbages included non-heading and semi-heading varieties, while radishes and many other vegetables were also important ingredients for kimchi. Chinese heading cabbage, once commonly distinguished in Korea as hobaechu, began entering Korea in the late nineteenth century and was cultivated much more widely by the 1930s. It did not immediately replace older Korean cabbage varieties, but improved heading varieties gradually became dominant during the second half of the twentieth century.
Dr. Woo Jang-choon was an important figure in this later agricultural history, but he did not introduce heading cabbage to Korea or invent the cabbage used for modern kimchi. After returning to Korea in 1950, he worked on domestic vegetable breeding, seed production, and the training of Korean breeders at a time when the country depended heavily on imported seed.
The breeding system he helped strengthen continued after his death in 1959. In 1961, Korea developed its first domestic F1 cabbage varieties, Wonye No. 1 and Wonye No. 2. Later breeding programs continued to improve yield, disease resistance, and other qualities suited to cultivation and the market.
Over the following decades, improved heading cabbage increasingly replaced older local varieties for Kimjang. By the 1970s it had become widespread in markets, and by the early 1980s it was the dominant cabbage used for winter kimchi.
This change did not create Kimjang. Koreans had been preserving vegetables and preparing winter kimchi long before modern cabbage breeding. What changed was the cabbage itself: the dense head and layered leaves of improved napa cabbage became the form most people now picture when they think of making large batches of baechu kimchi.
The Lasting Comfort of a Summer Stew
Months after Kimjang, the cabbage that was salted and seasoned in cold weather has become deeply fermented mukeunji. In my house, some of it may eventually end up in a pot with mackerel on a hot summer day.
That is one of the things I like about kimchi. The food changes with time. Freshly made kimchi can be eaten immediately with boiled pork, properly fermented kimchi becomes an everyday side dish, and older kimchi develops a stronger sourness that works well in stews and braised dishes.
The napa cabbage commonly used today has also changed through agricultural breeding, but the practice surrounding Kimjang is much older. Families have changed, storage has changed, and many people now buy kimchi instead of making a winter supply themselves.
Still, for those of us who have taken part in Kimjang, the memories are often very physical: cold cabbage, red rubber gloves, large bowls of seasoning, people sitting together for hours, and a piece of fresh kimchi wrapped around warm pork before the work is finished.
For me, that is what connects a summer pot of aged kimchi stew to Kimjang. It is not simply a preserved vegetable that has been sitting in the refrigerator for months. It carries the memory of how it was made, who made it together, and the winter day when it began.
About the Author 🇰🇷
I live in South Korea and write about the small details of Korean life and culture that I experience and observe firsthand.
English is my second language, so I sometimes use tools such as Gemini and Google Translate to help with translation and editing. The experiences, observations, opinions, and cultural perspectives in my articles are my own, and I personally review and edit every article before publishing it.
My goal with Korea Core Info is simple: to share everyday Korea from a local perspective and help international readers discover things they might not always find in a typical travel guide.
I hope my stories and guides help you understand Korea a little better — not just as a place to visit, but as a place where people live their everyday lives.