A shopper selects vegetables at a large supermarket in Seoul on Sept. 17 while buying food for the Chuseok holiday.KANG BO-HYUN
On a recent Thursday afternoon, Kim Soo-min was standing in front of a pile of cabbages at a Lotte Mart in Yeongdeungpo District, western Seoul: Should she buy a whole cabbage or a precut quarter?
The whole cabbage was cheaper by weight, but the quarter cost less overall. She ended up picking the smaller piece. “I'll buy just what I need and save the 800 won [60 cents] for something else,” she told herself aloud.
Another customer surnamed Shin was also lingering in front of zucchinis priced at 2,600 won apiece. “Zucchini prices seem to have doubled since the Lunar New Year holiday,” she said, turning away. “I always make hobakjeon [zucchini pancakes] for the holiday, but I don't think I will this year.”
With the Chuseok harvest festival a week away, the holiday table is starting to look different, as shoppers look for ways to cut their grocery bills amid prices that show no sign of easing. Consumer prices rose 3.1 percent in August from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Data and Statistics, up 0.3 percentage points from July's 2.8 percent. Vegetable prices alone jumped 12.4 percent from the previous month.
The average cost of setting a Chuseok holiday table with 28 items at traditional markets in six cities — Seoul, Busan, Incheon, Daegu, Gwangju and Daejeon — came to 303,750 won this year, according to a survey by the Korea Price Research Center, up 4 percent from last year and 26 percent from 2020, when the same basket cost 239,900 won.
As a result, shoppers have been more inclined to purchase cheaper, imported products. Over the past month through Sept. 11, sales of one-plus grade hanwoo (Korean beef) sirloin rose 23 percent at Lotte Mart, but sales of U.S. beef chuck eye roll jumped 96 percent and Australian beef bavette rose 61 percent, according to the retailer.
At the meat counter, a shopper surnamed Oh had loaded five 240-gram (8.5-ounce) packs of U.S. beef chuck eye roll into her cart for mutguk (beef radish soup), donggeurangttaeng (panfried meat and vegetable patties) and sanjeok (meat and vegetable skewers) she would set on her family's charye, the ancestral rite table Koreans lay out for Chuseok holiday.
“We have all our relatives over for the holiday and have to prepare a lot of food, so hanwoo is just too much of a burden,” Oh said. “I'm planning to buy imported ingredients for pretty much everything else, too, if I can.”
The meat aisle at a supermarket in SeoulKANG BO-HYUN
Sales of sliced Brazilian pork belly also rose 76 percent, outpacing the 5.6 percent increase for the domestic cut. Venezuelan hairtail sales rose 20 percent compared to 4 percent for the domestic variety. Yeonggwang gulbi (salted and sea-breeze-dried yellow croaker), especially popular at Chuseok, costs more than 20,000 won for 10 pieces compared to about 10,000 won for the same amount of Senegalese croaker.
Shoppers are also switching to cheaper cuts. Instead of pork belly or loin, more are buying foreleg and hind leg cuts, which cost about half as much. At Emart, pork belly sales rose 16.9 percent over the past month, while foreleg sales rose 31 percent. Pork belly runs 2,680 to 3,180 won per 100 grams at major discount chains, compared to 1,180 to 1,780 won for foreleg and hind leg cuts.
“Foreleg used to be sold almost entirely for stew, but lately a lot more customers are asking us to slice it thin for bulgogi [marinated grilled beef] or grind it for meatballs or tonkatsu [pork cutlet],” said a butcher-counter employee at a major discount chain surnamed Seong.
Shoppers are also buying smaller portions overall, even when it means paying more per unit, as long as the total price is lower. Bulky produce like cabbage and watermelon is increasingly sold precut into halves, thirds or quarters. Sales of “environmentally friendly cut cabbage” rose 1,777 percent at Emart over the past month, while sales of precut fruit cups — 200-gram servings mixing mango, peach and pineapple for easy sampling — rose 283 percent.
Experts say the problem calls for medium- to long-term solutions rather than one-off fixes. “Prices are likely to keep rising because of a mix of factors — surging demand, oil price instability, exchange rates,” said Kang In-soo, a professor of economics at Sookmyung Women's University. “When it comes to food, we need a comprehensive management system that covers everything from supply-and-demand management to restructuring the distribution network.”
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
