Kimjang: Why UNESCO Listed the Ritual, Not the Kimchi

Korean families gathered outdoors making kimchi together during kimjang season

Every autumn, Korean households across the country prepare for gimjang (김장): the communal, once-a-year process of making enough kimchi to last through winter. In 2013, UNESCO inscribed this practice on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. What most English-language coverage glosses over is a distinction that Korea's own Cultural Heritage Administration had to be publicly corrected on: UNESCO didn't recognize kimchi. It recognized gimjang — the act of making and sharing it — because UNESCO's heritage lists have never once included a food itself. That distinction is easy to lose in translation, since English coverage of the listing routinely shorthands it as "Korea's kimchi gets UNESCO recognition," a framing that would actually be impossible under UNESCO's own rules for what qualifies as intangible cultural heritage.

What Got Listed, and Why the Distinction Matters

Item	Detail
Official title	"Kimjang, Making and Sharing Kimchi in the Republic of Korea"
Listed	December 5, 2013, 8th Session of the Intergovernmental Committee, Baku, Azerbaijan
Korea's heritage count at the time	16th UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage item, following Arirang (2012), Ganggangsullae (2009), and Pansori (2008)
What was evaluated	The 2012 Cultural Heritage Administration survey cited in the listing found roughly 90% of Korean households still made gimjang themselves

According to Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the committee's evaluation focused specifically on two things: that gimjang, passed down through generations within families, represents Koreans' culture of sharing and community in preparation for winter, and that it strengthens solidarity among community members, giving Koreans a sense of identity and belonging. Notably, when Korea's Cultural Heritage Administration initially publicized the decision as "kimchi and gimjang culture" being inscribed, UNESCO issued a formal correction — the food itself was never eligible, only the communal practice surrounding it.

A Year-Round Calendar, Not a Single Day

According to Korea's Heritage Portal, gimjang's exact origin is unknown, but it appears in written form as early as a poem by the Goryeo-dynasty scholar Yi Gyu-bo (이규보, 1168–1241), who described radishes preserved in jang (fermented sauce) or salt. Systematic accounts of kimchi being made specifically for early winter don't appear until 19th-century texts. The Heritage Portal describes the modern practice as a year-long process rather than a single event: households traditionally prepare varied seafood-based jeotgal (salted, fermented seafood) in spring, secure sun-dried sea salt over summer, and carry out the actual kimjang itself in late autumn or early winter, timed later in warmer regions where more salt is needed to preserve the kimchi through a milder winter. The tradition of burying finished kimchi in earthenware jangdok jars underground — maintaining a stable temperature for months of storage — long predates modern refrigeration, and the mutual-aid labor exchange custom known as pumasi (품앗이), in which villagers took turns helping each other with large seasonal tasks, is widely believed to be the origin of today's practice of neighbors gathering to make gimjang together.

One Practice, Two Separate Listings

Gimjang is one of a small number of cultural practices recognized by UNESCO on both sides of the Korean border, but not under a single joint listing. South Korea's inscription came in 2013; North Korea's own "tradition of kimchi-making" was separately inscribed in 2015. According to the World Institute of Kimchi's own reference platform, this makes kimchi-making culture a rare instance in which the same underlying Korean tradition holds two distinct entries in the UNESCO registry, one for each Korean state, rather than a single shared listing.

Why It's Fading Even as Its Status Grows

The heritage listing hasn't stopped a real decline in the practice it describes. A retrospective published by Jeonmae in December 2023, marking ten years since the inscription, reported that rising ingredient costs — driven in part by cabbage disease outbreaks affecting napa cabbage supply — combined with an aging generation of home gimjang-makers and the growth of single-person households, have pushed a growing number of Koreans toward store-bought packaged kimchi instead of making their own. The article used the term gimpo-jok (김포족), a portmanteau of gimjang (김장) and pogi (포기, "giving up") that circulates in Korean media to describe people who have opted out of making kimjang at home altogether — a wordplay that only works in Korean, since it also puns on hangul syllables shared with the coastal city name Gimpo. Home kitchen appliances have accelerated the same shift from a different angle: the kimchi refrigerator, a dedicated appliance category that emerged in Korea in the 1990s specifically to replicate the temperature stability of buried jangdok jars, made it possible to store large batches of kimchi indefinitely without a yard to bury them in — useful for apartment-dwelling households, but also part of why fewer families now feel pressure to gather and produce a full winter's supply in one seasonal push, since a smaller batch stored mechanically can simply be replenished later.

Where the Tradition Is Still Public and Communal

The clearest place gimjang survives as visible, communal practice today is at regional food festivals rather than in individual homes. Goesan County in North Chungcheong Province, which pioneered commercial pre-salted cabbage (절임배추) production, holds the Goesan Kimjang Festival each year — now in its eighth edition as of 2026 and named a top-tier festival by North Chungcheong Province for two consecutive years. According to local ordinance, Goesan has designated the first Friday of November each year as "Gimjang Day," and the county times its festival around that date specifically to preserve the symbolic and institutional weight of the tradition rather than treat it as a moveable tourist event. The 2025 edition drew roughly 123,000 visitors over four days and generated an estimated 1.2 billion won in festival-period sales, according to local reporting, alongside a community kimchi-donation relay in which 17 organizations contributed more than 15,000 kilograms of finished kimchi to those in need — itself a direct continuation of the sharing ethic UNESCO's committee cited in 2013. Other regions run their own versions on similar autumn timing: Gangwon Province's Pyeongchang Highland Cabbage Kimjang Festival and Suwon's own kimchi festival both draw on the same seasonal window, each built around a local cabbage-growing specialty rather than a single national event.

FAQ

Is kimchi itself a UNESCO World Heritage item?
No. UNESCO's heritage lists, both tangible and intangible, do not include foods themselves. What's listed is gimjang — the practice of communally making and sharing kimchi — which is why Korea's own government had to correct early reporting that described "kimchi" as the inscribed item.

Do North and South Korea share the same UNESCO listing for kimchi-making?
No. They hold two separate entries: South Korea's gimjang inscription from 2013 and North Korea's kimchi-making tradition, inscribed independently in 2015.

Verified as of September 19, 2026. Festival dates, attendance, and revenue figures for individual events change year to year; readers planning a visit should confirm current-year dates through the official festival sources linked below.