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Mi-kyung Han

Mi-kyung Han covers the crops that fill Korean kitchens: cabbage, garlic, peppers, soybeans, and the seasonings made from them. The features follow a crop from the field calendar through storage to the table, and ask how region, weather, and timing change what cooks buy and what it costs.

Articles by Mi-kyung Han

  1. A round wooden bowl heaped with toasted sesame seeds, a wooden spoon leaning in it, on a plain white surface

    Oilseeds & Seasoning8 min read

    Two Seeds and a Bottle of Oil

    Sesame oil and perilla oil carry Korean flavour in a bottle. Korea imports about nine of every ten sesame seeds it uses and grows most of its perilla, and since 2025 a paddy payment has been trying to grow both.

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  2. Dozens of brown earthenware jars of different sizes, lids on, crowded on a stone yard under trees, with tiled walls behind

    Soybeans & Fermentation8 min read

    The Bean Behind the Jang

    Korea’s heritage definition of jang-making begins with growing soybeans. Factory jang is made overwhelmingly from imported beans, and the payment that moved soybeans into rice paddies has left the government buying more than a third of the domestic crop.

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  3. Whole-leaf napa cabbage kimchi arranged in a white bowl

    Vegetables & Fermentation5 min read

    The Kimchi Table: A Harvest, a Brine, and a Living Winter

    A head of napa cabbage carries a mountain summer, an autumn forecast, a brining decision and a microbial succession into the refrigerator. Kimjang is where those systems meet.

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  4. Freshly harvested garlic bulbs spread out to dry on a mat in front of a tiled-roof farmhouse

    Fields & Seasons6 min read

    Korea's Garlic Belt: Where the Pungency Comes From

    Two garlics — a cold-hardy northern type and a mild-wintered southern one — split the peninsula between them, and the season that carries an autumn clove to a June bulb sets the price on the shelf.

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