Just like an everyday roll

 

Honestly, I did not think much of kimbap before. It has been always there, and I remember that my mom painstakingly rolled sea weed with ingredients consisting of ham, beef, pickled radish, spinach and more before picnic or school travel. It was so popular at home for being street food and served mostly in small local eateries and always available at convenient stores. People in this country typically associate this sea weed roll with picnic because there seemed to be no picnic food that is more popular.

This food stems from the kind of sushi roll called norimaki, which is sushi made with see weed and many stuffs inside roll. However, these days many don’t know this origin and enjoy. Before this year, for tourists and foreign residents, this is nothing but one of readily available street foods when you are in hurry or hungry something, you just go outside and can pick for cheap price.

As you may also noticed, starting in 2023, the popularity of kimbap is suddenly soaring in the United States. We know that kimbap is recognized as a healthy food due to the influence of the Korean Wave, especially K dramas, it is difficult to find ingredients, not easy to make and there are not many places that sell these rolls outside Korea.

It was a food eaten mostly by Korean Americans, but its popularity increased significantly when frozen kimbap began to be sold at Trader Joe's, an American supermarket. There was also unintended luck: in Korea, about 10 types of frozen kimbap were made, but due to the U.S.'s regulations on foreign meat imports, kind of rolls made with tofu instead of meat were sold, and because the meaty ingredients were removed, consequently, imported kimbap were converted into vegan foods.

As these foods were recognized, sales increased explosively, especially among vegetarians, and kimbap became even more popular combined with favorable reviews from influencers. And at a time when prices in the U.S. have risen sharply since the pandemic and the price of kimbap sold at Korean supermarkets is exceeding $8 to $10 per row, Trader Joe's aggressive price of $3.99, even though it is frozen, drew even greater response. Thanks to this, many Trader Joe's stores sold out quickly after launching in August, and people who failed to purchase are filing claims with the stores and informing them that the next stock will be in stock in early October. It is said that the store employees are even providing guidance, saying, "If you go to a Korean supermarket, they sell fresh kimbap, not frozen. It tastes better that way." 

At home, meanwhile, seaweed or laver is the number 1 item in marine products exported from Korea and nick name of this plant is ‘black semi-conductor’. Sea weed had been considered undesirable or useless in countries other than Korea and Japan, but now with soaring popularity of kimbap, thing have changed. It is remained to see if current trend will spill over to other seafood industries worldwide dealing with seaweed.