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In the 1950 and 1960s, due to economic problems immediately after the war, red pepper powder was not used much. Due to these circumstances, when I ask the elderly, there are quite a few people who say that as a side dish in their childhood, instead of the red cabbage kimchi they are now, it was salty with only mild soup. Some of the testimonies of the generation said, "At first, no one believed that those who fled during the Korean War were a very wealthy family in their hometown, but when I saw them make cabbage kimchi with a lot of seasoning, I knew it was true." The period when the common people could easily enjoy cabbage kimchi, the representative of modern kimchi, was after Dr. Woo Jang-chun's extensive variety improvement, which greatly increased agricultural productivity. It has only been about 60 years since cabbage kimchi has become a representative of kimchi. As evidence, cabbage kimchi does not have various recipes by region, and there are only relatively small differences in the composition of the seasoning, and Markovcha, made in Russia by Goryeo people who split from the Korean people at the end of the Joseon Dynasty, is kimchi made of carrots.
Some argue that there was no red kimchi before the pepper tradition, and that there is also kimchi that is colored using red dyes such as mandrami and lotus flowers, and such as mandrami and lotus flowers are simply for decoration, not for watering.
In modern times, it has become a representative of Korean fermented food culture. It is a representative food of Koreans in name and reality, and kimjang is the heart of Korean food culture to the extent that it has been designated as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Old kimchi recipes from ancient documents, including the Jeungbo Forest Economy, are also being discovered and studied by culinary researchers.