CHINA / SOCIETY
Chinese cabbage solves the kimchi crises in South Korea
Published: Oct 29, 2019 05:18 PM

A man carrying a single leek admires a load of cabbage as farmers wait for buyers in a township at Shenyang, Northeast China's Liaoning Province on October 10, 2019. Photo: IC


South Korean companies that make kimchi need not scale back production after a sharp drop in the country's cabbage crop: China's cabbage farmers have come to the rescue.    

"More than 30 tons of Chinese cabbage is being exported to South Korea per day. We buy cabbage from farmers for about 0.6 yuan ($0.085) a kilogram, and we sell it to Koreans for about 2 yuan per kilo," said Li Xinqi, a manager of a company in East China's Shandong Province.

Li told Pear Video that the high price they get from South Korean buyers is due to the high demand for cabbage from kimchi makers. 

According to China's economic site ce.cn, a series of powerful typhoons affected nearly 940 hectares of cabbage in South Korean, dropping production by 10 percent from the previous year. A two-kilogram cabbage costs 30 yuan in Seoul, twice the price at this time last year.

"My cabbage crop is all booked up and sold out, the net income from a mu (0.067 hectare) is 1,000 yuan," a local farmer who planted 6.7 hectares of cabbage, told Pear Video.

"I hope our cabbage can help our South Korean friends, and they don't raise the price of kimchi to us," said a netizen. 

Pear Video