Kimchi: Korea strives to keep tradition on the menu

Hera Diani, The Jakarta Post, Seoul

A cloyingly sharp smell hung in the air at the aT Center's exhibition hall here, site of Kimchi Expo 2003 last week.

Rows and rows of stalls displaying Korea's famous fermented dish, made with a spice rack full of different ingredients, took up the two floors of the modern building.

The idea of putting on a six-day international exhibition honoring a pickled dish may raise eyebrows among some people, but not Koreans.

For them, kimchi is serious stuff, part and parcel of their culture, with old sayings such as, "A man can live without a wife but not without kimchi", and "as Korean as kimchi".

For more than 3,000 years, sour-spicy kimchi has been a revered staple of Korean cuisine. Even today you would be hard put to find a Korean house, apartment or monastery without pots of kimchi on the porch, balcony or the refrigerator.

On the Korean peninsula, kimchi is so pervasive that people compare it to life's essentials of air and water. There is even the Kimchi Field Museum in Seoul, satisfying the questions of those curious about where it came from and how it evolved.

Director of the Kimchi Research Institute Park Kun-Young said the food also had philosophical value in honoring ancestors in this Confucian society.

"Our ancestors were poor, and we have no natural resources. That was why they tried to find a way to preserve food in the winter," said Park, a professor at Pusan National University's Department of Food Science and Nutrition.

But globalization, with the inevitable mushrooming of fast- food restaurants around the world, has even affected venerable kimchi.

"Young children don't seem as fond of kimchi. We're afraid that as they avoid kimchi, the culture may deteriorate and disappear," said Kim Young-Mo of the chief committee of the Expo.

There has also been decrease in market demand, and the country's producers face tight competition from Japan and China.

These are the very reasons the country held the second annual Expo.

"Other objectives are to introduce kimchi to the world market, to reinvigorate the kimchi industry and to increase the domestic market," said Kim, adding that the total budget for the Expo was about US$80,000.

A total of 181 companies participated in the Expo. Of that number, only 50 companies were kimchi producers, with the rest including spice and ingredient makers, kimchi refrigerator, health food firms and others.

The committee put on a variety of programs for the Expo which started on Nov. 6, such as a kimchi making contest for foreigners, kimchi cooking contest and folk song contest.

Of course, children are a focus to ensure there will be kimchi lovers in the future, so the committee invited 10,000 kindergarten students to the event, with some of them getting to participate in a kimchi making program. There was also a kimchi writing competition for elementary school students.

"Through this Expo, we also hope to attract buyers from other countries to boost the local kimchi industry, which is still on a small scale," said Kim.

In the past, kimchi was made by housewives and as a cottage industry. It has only developed as an industry about 10 years ago, and now consists of some 600 producers all over the country. But only 30 to 40 percent of the producers are economically viable, with the rest barely keeping afloat.

Only 5 percent of the total companies have the resources to export.

"Many if not all Korean women know how to make kimchi. But modern, kitchen-less homes have led to more and more kimchi being bought from the store, because it's costly to make kimchi at home," Kim said.

The most recent data, from the year 2000, showed that 30 percent of kimchi consumption in Korea was store bought. The total volume of kimchi produced commercially is some 500,000 tons annually, or a 1 trillion won market, which include not only branded kimchi in fancy packaging, but also that in modest boxes sold in traditional markets.

In 1992, kimchi consumption per head was 34.9 kilograms while in 2001, it was 33.6 kilograms, with the local price per kilogram around 4,000 won ($3.50).

Kim said small decrease in market demand was small "yet we can feel it".

Income from exports has also decreased, from around $78 million in 2000 to $68 million a year later, before rebounding to $79 million in 2002.

Japan takes 94 percent of the kimchi exported from Korea, but that only accounts for 6 percent of the total amount consumed in the country, with the rest made locally or from China.

"As kimchi gains more scientific recognition, Japanese are growing to like it. And they now know more about the method to produce it," Kim said.

Korea also imports its national dish, with this year's figure of about 24,000 tons or some $10 million. Almost all (98 percent) imported kimchi is from China, a country blessed with abundant natural resources to make the dish.

Korea is now working on promoting the nutritional value of kimchi as a low-fat, low-calorie and healthy dish. When Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) broke out earlier this year, some swore by the medicinal properties of kimchi.

"We hope this exhibition can encourage producers to export, and influence the government in terms of making its export policy," Kim said.

Organizing an exhibition, he added, was an effective way to communicate with a large number of people.

"I do believe that after the SARS epidemic, the increasing interest in Korean singers and actors, Korea will be more familiar to people and interest in kimchi will increase, too," Kim said.

With about 100,000 visitors visiting the Expo, there is reason for his hope of keeping kimchi on the menu.

Yet it is the spirit of maintaining a tradition and upholding it, despite the onslaught of the golden arches and other mass culture, that is really admirable about Koreans and their kimchi.

We Indonesians should learn from it and never take acar/asinan (pickled vegetables and fruit) or other traditional food lightly anymore.