InterviewHow a London-based author is redefining kimchi

When Jihyun “Kimmy” Kim reflects on her childhood in Korea, her mind lands on the everyday rhythm of a family dining table.

“There would be rice, my mother’s doenjang jjigae (soybean paste stew) or miyeokguk (seaweed soup), and kimchi would always be there. As a child, I hardly noticed it because it was so normal," she recalled during a recent interview with The Korea Times.

Growing up in Korea, kimchi was simply part of everyday life — always present, rarely discussed and taken entirely for granted. Yet when Kim relocated to the United Kingdom in 2008 following her marriage, that quiet background fixture suddenly became a lens through which she viewed her distance from home.

“I never really planned to start a kimchi business. It happened quite naturally after living in the U.K. ... In a way, I had to leave Korea to really appreciate something that had always been part of my life.”

Kimchi misconceptions

Living abroad exposed a striking disconnect between the cultural institution Kim knew and the way Western diners understood it. Overseas, kimchi was frequently reduced to a trend: misconstrued as a basic counterpart to sauerkraut, or marketed strictly as a functional probiotic superfood.

“I started to notice how differently kimchi was understood here. It was often described simply as spicy fermented cabbage or compared with sauerkraut,” she explained. “The flavors and methods were also quite different. It made me want to share the kimchi I knew, made with the flavors, methods and traditions I grew up with.”

Driven by that impulse, Kim launched her artisanal business, Kimchi & Radish, in 2018. But as she sold her jars and hosted workshops across London, she realized that feeding people was only half the equation. Western home cooks were hungry for understanding.

“The longer I worked with kimchi, the more I wanted to share not just the food itself, but the knowledge behind it,” she said. “Through running my kimchi business and teaching workshops, I saw how curious people were about kimchi. They wanted to understand why we salt the vegetables, how the seasoning is balanced, what happens during fermentation and why some kimchi is best eaten fresh while others are better after they have matured.”

That realization illuminated a subtle paradox at the heart of Korean culinary traditions. In Korea, traditional culinary knowledge is absorbed through lived experience rather than written instruction.

“A lot of kimchi making is traditionally learned through watching, tasting, touching and doing. It isn’t always something that can be understood simply by following a recipe,” she noted. “Over the years, making kimchi professionally taught me so much, and I had always thought that one day I would like to record what I had learned in a book.”

Her book "Kimchi: 80 recipes for classic kimchi and modern twists," released by Yellow Kite earlier this year, was designed to bridge the gap between traditional Korean intuition and the practical realities of cooking in Western kitchens.

“Some of the Korean kimchi books available in English are translations of books originally written with people living in Korea in mind. But making kimchi outside Korea is not always the same,” Kim explained. “The ingredients are different, and some Korean ingredients can be difficult to find. Even the cabbage can have a different texture and water content, which affects how you salt it and how long it needs to be salted.”

Conversely, Western books often approached kimchi purely through technical microbiology or forced analogies. “I wanted my book to bridge that gap. It is rooted in the Korean traditions and food culture I grew up with, but it is written from my experience of making kimchi outside Korea today ... I wanted readers to understand what kimchi is, why we make it the way we do and then give them the knowledge and confidence to make it successfully with the ingredients available to them.”

Letting tradition live somewhere new

For Kim, mastering kimchi is less about rigid timing and more about listening to the produce in front of you. “People often focus on the seasoning, but even the best seasoning cannot compensate for vegetables that haven’t been prepared properly. With cabbage kimchi, salting is particularly important... I always tell people not to rely only on time. Vegetables change throughout the year. A summer cabbage can behave very differently from a winter cabbage. Touch it, bend it and taste it. The recipe gives you guidance, but the ingredient tells you when it is ready.”

That deep understanding of foundational principles gives Kim the freedom to embrace local British produce without abandoning her roots. Take, for example, her Wild Garlic Kimchi, an ingredient native to British woodlands in spring.

Wild garlic kimchi, Brussels sprout kimchi

“Wild garlic wasn’t something I grew up eating in Korea. It is an ingredient I discovered through living in Britain, and now I look forward to its arrival every spring,” she said warmly. “Wild Garlic Kimchi brings together my Korean roots and the seasons of the country where I now live.”

She applies the same spirit to Brussels Sprout Kimchi, transforming a quintessential U.K. winter vegetable. “For me, a modern twist doesn’t mean Westernizing kimchi or moving away from tradition. I think when you understand a tradition properly, you have more freedom to work with different ingredients without losing its foundations ... I don’t see it as changing the tradition. I see it as allowing the tradition to continue and live somewhere new.”

Though the global explosion of K-pop, films and dramas has brought unprecedented attention to Korean food, Kim believes the cultural dialogue is ready for its next step. “When I first moved to Britain, I often had to explain what kimchi was. Now people come to my workshops already knowing and loving kimchi ... But I think we are now at an interesting point. Kimchi has become very well known, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is well understood. I hope the next stage of kimchi’s popularity is about deeper understanding, not simply recognizing the word.”

That deeper understanding is not measured in commercial expansion, but in quiet human connections.

“Some of the smallest moments have actually been the most rewarding,” Kim said. “Someone might come to one of my workshops and months later send me a photograph of kimchi they have made at home ... Kimchi has always been passed from one person to another through making, tasting and sharing. Being able to continue a little part of that tradition here in Britain is very special to me.”

Ultimately, Kim’s work reclaims kimchi from modern health fads and returns it to its human origins. “Koreans were making and eating kimchi long before anyone talked about probiotics. It was about using what was growing around you, preserving food through the seasons, feeding your family and, most importantly, making something delicious.”

Through her hands, her workshops and her pages, a childhood memory of a quiet family table in Korea continues to find a new home in kitchens across the globe.