113 Cultural Post 3

[Jacob Park]

For this cultural post, I am going to focus on Kimchi. Kimchi was originally just pickled vegetables that were fermented. Kimchi was not originally spicy until the American army introduced Korea to the red pepper. Although it was introduced, it was not adapted into Kimchi until a few decades later. The importance of fermentation was due to the fact that there were no refrigerators to keep the food fresh. Since Korea was not a very affluent country and was one of the poorest countries in the world, people needed to think of other ways to keep their food fresh. Fermenting it meant that the food could have been eaten for a while after it was made. There are different types of Kimchi, like cucumber kimchi and water kimchi. Each region has its own specialty in Kimchi. This combined with many other vegetables made it so that there are over 100 varieties of Kimchi. Kimchi is something that was eaten for hundreds of years and has not really changed in its shape, size, or form.