I just learned that South Korea has a horrible "kimchi deficit," in an article here.
The same article points out, however, that overall, Korea runs a major trade surplus. And they make plenty of money on that surplus, which, apparently, they spend importing cheap Chinese-made kimchi.
The irony is that "cabbage" (배추) is a slang word for money, in Korean, as well as being a main ingredient in most varieties of kimchi. So they make their "cabbage" selling the world smartphones and memory chips, and then spend that "cabbage" for real cabbage from China.
Personally, I'm going to have to look more closely at the labels on my pre-made, store-bought kimchi, because I prefer to avoid food imported from China – the quality issues in the past have seemed quite notable. I do marvel, however, at the fact that China has become such a dominant food exporter in so many product domains: a country with so many people, where people were dying in famine half a century ago, still manages to export vast quantities of food.
[daily log: walking, 7km]