Photo: Grocery store rationing napa cabbages to three heads per customer. Credit: The Blue Roof.
Few vegetables are as important to Koreans as napa cabbage 배추 and daikon radish 무, the main ingredients for the most popular type of kimchi 김치. But record heat this summer resulted in poor harvests - meaning that as of October 2, the cost of daikon radish had increased by 50.3% year-over-year, while napa cabbage was up by 32.7%. Skyrocketing costs and supply shortfalls have led some markets to ration their cabbages. Processed food makers have run out of kimchi to sell.
A lack of kimchi on a Korean table is a crisis. The government is responding by importing 200 tons of fresh napa cabbage from China each week. The response to the imported cabbages among Korean consumers has been lukewarm, however, largely due to their mistrust of Chinese food safety regulations.