Korean Table

How much sodium is in kimchi? 593 mg per 100 g. The figure comes from the World Institute of Kimchi (세계김치연구소), the government-funded research institute in Gwangju, and it is the number quoted whenever kimchi gets called a salt bomb. The same page prints a second number right beside it. Potassium, 355 mg. That pairing is the whole argument, and the institute makes it explicitly. Its fact-check card news on kimchi sodium, dated 10 February 2023, sets kimchi's potassium-to-sodium ratio at 1 to 1.7 and puts danmuji, the yellow pickled radish that comes free with your jjajangmyeon, in the row below. Danmuji runs 637 mg of sodium against 42 mg of potassium, so 1 to 15.2. Where 593 mg sits inside a Korean day Those two numbers are not from a national food-composition table. I had assumed they were, until I read the credit line under the table. It points to 서울특별시보건환경연구원, Seoul's municipal public health and environment research institute, and to its 2017 survey of sodium and potas...

People say it in every thread about Korean food. Koreans eat kimchi at every meal. A paper published in June 2026 in the Korean Journal of Community Nutrition put a number next to it. Among 103,267 adults surveyed between 2010 and 2024, the share reporting no kimchi at all on the previous day went from 11.7% to 22.7%. Just over one adult in five, on any given day. Where the number comes from The study is by Hui-Yang Zhao, Hyunji Ham, Sumin Kim, Chang Hyeon Lee, Kyungho Ha and Sangah Shin, working across Chung-Ang University, Jeju National University and the World Institute of Kimchi (세계김치연구소), and it is open access on PMC . Their data is KNHANES, the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, covering its 2010 to 2024 rounds. The intake figure comes from a 24-hour dietary recall, a record of what a person ate in the previous day. So 22.7% counts people who happened to eat none in one particular day, and it says nothing about whether they have kimchi in the fridge. Th...