Kimchi Period COrigin theory CVerified

Kimchi as a preserved vegetable—salted and fermented (chimchae, 沈菜)—is genuinely old. But the red, spicy kimchi that comes to mind today differs from its forerunner in both color and heat. Both come from gochu, the chili pepper, a New World crop native to Central and South America.

Until the chili crossed the ocean and reached the Korean peninsula, red kimchi had no way of coming into being. Its arrival is usually placed between the close of the sixteenth century and the opening of the seventeenth. The 1614 Jibong Yuseol (芝峰類説) of Yi Su-gwang enters the plant under the heading nammancho (南蠻椒), the southern barbarians' pepper, a name for something that had come from outside; it had first arrived from Japan, the entry says, and for that reason people commonly called it waegyeoja (倭芥子), Japanese mustard. The same entry warns that the pepper carries a strong poison, and notes that taverns were by then planting it and blending its fierce heat into distilled liquor for sale, with many of those who drank it dying. The plant was already grown and traded, then, but the use the entry records is liquor; pickles do not appear in it.

Hong Man-seon's Sallim gyeongje (山林經濟), from the early eighteenth century, lists the chili among field crops under the name namcho (南椒), also called waecho (倭椒), the Japanese pepper, and explains how to grow it: sow the seed in dry ground in the second month, then transplant after the rains of the fourth or fifth. Still known by a name that marked it as coming from Japan, the chili had become a crop grown in Korean fields. In 1766 Yu Jung-rim enlarged the book as the Jeungbo sallim gyeongje (增補山林經濟), which records many kinds of kimchi, chonggak kimchi among them. By the late nineteenth century, the Siuijeonseo (是議全書) presents a whole-head napa cabbage kimchi close to today's form. Napa cabbage (baechu) entered Korea in the late nineteenth century, and the modern style settled alongside it.

Red kimchi, with chili in the pickle, is generally thought to have come about from the eighteenth century on. No source has yet been found that fixes the year, though; what is clear is that by the late nineteenth century at the latest, a kimchi of whole cabbage heads close to today's form existed. The antiquity of pickling itself sits comfortably with this path. The history of the pale, chili-less forerunner runs far older than red kimchi.

Two stubborn claims cling to the red of kimchi. One holds that the chili is a native Korean plant rather than a New World import; the other treats today's red kimchi as an unbroken line reaching back to Goryeo and antiquity.

The native-chili claim argues that Korean chilies are mild and distinct from those of Central and South America, and that Koreans have grown them for some 1,500 years. But the chili is a New World plant, and the 1614 Jibong Yuseol records it as something that first came from Japan; Koreans of that generation took it to be an arrival from outside. The ancient-continuity claim confuses two different things: the genuine antiquity of pickling (chimchae) with the far later date of red kimchi, which presupposes the chili. That the genre of pickles is old, and when red kimchi came into being, are separate questions.

Between the chili's arrival and the settling of red kimchi, sources of different dates light up only scattered points. Yi Su-gwang's encyclopedic miscellany of 1614, the Jibong Yuseol, records the pepper as a plant come from abroad and gives its use as drink. The early-eighteenth-century Sallim gyeongje counts the chili among field crops under the name "Japanese pepper," but in the modern Korean translation of 1982, the "vegetables" section that gathers its kimchi recipes never mentions the chili. The heat of its mountain-mustard kimchi comes from the mustard greens themselves, and the text says that pickling sliced radish and scallion alongside softens it. The book survives in several manuscripts, and what the other manuscripts say cannot be told from this translation. Yu Jung-rim's enlarged edition of 1766, the Jeungbo sallim gyeongje, is often introduced as the first cookbook to record kimchi made with chili, yet other accounts credit kimchi with chili to the earlier, unenlarged Sallim gyeongje; which book, and which entry, differs from one account to the next. The late-nineteenth-century cookbook Siuijeonseo shows whole heads of napa cabbage packed and fermented, a kimchi close to the one eaten today. No source showing red kimchi running back to antiquity has been found—nor has any source yet been found that fixes the year the chili went into kimchi.

When and how the chili made the crossing has not settled in its details either. The Jibong Yuseol names where it came from, saying that it first came from Japan, and the common name waegyeoja, Japanese mustard, mirrors how Koreans of that generation took the plant to be a Japanese arrival. The entry does not, however, give a year. The usual view places the arrival around the Japanese invasions of Korea at the end of the sixteenth century, and the best-known account has the chili entering by way of Japan, or through the trading network of Portuguese ships. Even so, the year of the crossing, the hands that carried it, and how far the Portuguese ships were involved cannot be traced in contemporary sources, and more than one account still stands.