Kimchi price crisis

Dag-nabit! Just before I'm scheduled to go to Seoul, this catastrophe has to happen...

The price for one head of long-leafed Napa cabbage grown in Korea has skyrocketed in the past month, to as much as $14, from about $2.50. Domestic radishes have tripled in price, to more than $5 apiece, and the price of garlic has more than doubled.

Kimchi has become so expensive that some restaurants in the capital no longer offer it free as a banchan, or side dish, a situation akin to having an American burger joint charge for ketchup, although decidedly more calamitous here.

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The president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, has said that until the crisis eases he will eat only the cheap and inferior kind of cabbage — the round-headed variety...

How can you have a good barbecue without unlimited, free banchan?

It can't be done!