Among the traditional dishes that the Korean people have enjoyed from olden times are pickles, which reflect their taste and likings.
The Korean ancestors had long known that salt can prevent food spoilage and used it in their dietary life to pickle such foods as vegetables, fish and meat so as to store them for a long time.
Such practice of pickling has a very long history. According to historical records, Koreans produced salt from ancient times and ate salted fish a lot.
Kimchi can also be said to have started from pickling at first.
There were parsley kimchi, chives kimchi, radish kimchi, leaf mustard kimchi, etc.
These kinds of kimchi are salted foods created by Koreans in the course of making wide use of pickles in their dietary life for a long time.
Pickling was further developed in the period of the feudal Joson dynasty.
Pickles in those days were divided into salt pickles directly preserved in salt, pickles preserved in bean paste or soy sauce, vinegared pickles and bran pickles using rice bran according to pickling agents. They were also divided into vegetable pickles, meat pickles, fish pickles and herb pickles according to ingredients.
Pickles are very good preserved foods that make it possible to store seasonal foods for a long time under the climatic conditions of the DPRK with distinctive seasons.