Reading the auction pages

The auction pages show what fresh produce fetched at Korea's public wholesale markets, lot by lot, summarized for each item, market and trading day. The index lists every item; each item has a page of its own. This guide explains what each number on those pages means. The full method note is on the index, under How these prices are calculated.

Where the prices come from

Every lot auctioned at five public wholesale markets (Seoul Garak, Busan Eomgung, Daegu Bukbu, Gwangju Gakhwa and Daejeon Ojeong), from the real-time auction data that the Korea Agro-Fisheries and Food Trade Corporation (aT) publishes on data.go.kr. The Ag Digest keeps each trading day and summarizes it after the night's results arrive. The line "Auction of …" on every page names the trading day you are looking at.

These are auction lots at five markets, not every sale a market makes, and not every market in Korea. Read the volumes as what went through the auction floor, not as a market's whole trade.

Today's price by market

The headline figure is the median price per kilogram at Seoul Garak, the national benchmark, on the latest trading day. When Garak did not trade an item that day, the page quotes the market that sold the most of it and says so.

Under the headline, each market has a row:

• The bar runs from the 25th to the 75th percentile price per kilogram: the middle half of the kilograms sold. The mark on it is the median.
• Previous day compares with the same market's previous trading day for that item, up or down. After a holiday that day can be several days earlier; its date is shown.
• Package average is what an average package of the most common size fetched, for example a 10 kg box. It is the figure a trader hears quoted.
• Fewer than 10 lots: shown, not ranked. A handful of lots makes a price you can see but should not lean on, so such a day is never ranked, never gets a change, and never sets the scale of a chart.

Best market names the market with the highest median, and only among markets that sold at least 10 lots that day, and only when two or more qualify.

From a box price to a price per kilogram

A lot is sold per package: a 10 kg box, a 4 kg tray, a 15 kg bag. To compare markets and days, the page divides each package price by the package weight. Packages sold by count rather than by weight (a bunch, a bundle) have no weight to divide by and are left out of the per-kilogram figures; they still count in the volume and the lot totals.

Median and the middle half

For each item, market and trading day the median is the price at or below which half of the kilograms sold. It is weighted by weight, so a 15 kg box counts more than a 4 kg tray. The middle half is bounded by the 25th and 75th percentiles.

The page prefers these to the average because auction prices are lopsided: the lowest and highest prices of a day are single lots, often a mislabelled package, and an average follows them while a median does not. Read a price from the median and the range, and treat the extremes as curiosities.

Origin as declared

Origin is what the shipper declared when the lot was consigned. The markets do not verify it, and neither do we. Every origin figure on the site carries that caveat.

The seven-day chart

The chart under the table shows the last seven trading days:

• The shaded band is Seoul Garak's middle half; the dark line its median.
• Thin lines are the other markets' medians.
• Bars below are the kilograms sold across all five markets that day.

Only trading days appear; a holiday leaves no gap. When Garak did not trade, the band follows the market the headline quotes.

How the index is grouped

The index lists items by product family: fruit and nuts; melons, berries and tomatoes; leaf and stem vegetables; root vegetables; onions, garlic, chili and ginger; mushrooms; ginseng and medicinal crops; beans, grains and potatoes; and so on. Each row shows the item's median at the benchmark market, the change against the previous day and the day's volume. Items that did not trade in the last two trading days sit at the end under their own heading; their pages show the latest day they did trade. The search box at the top finds an item by its Korean or English name.

Going deeper

With Premium or Team an item page also shows each market's price distribution over 90 days, a year or since the archive began in September 2026, the gap between markets, declared origin and variety, prices in US dollars and the news behind a move: see The drill-down. Price alerts are described in Auction price alerts. The Auction Desk add-on opens the individual lots, prices by grade and CSV files: see The lot explorer.