Korean cuisine — 918, Goryeo Buddhist lean · 536

Is Korean barbecue the everyday dinner? It is a social and restaurant form. Weeknight tables more often hold rice, kimchi and a jjigae or leftover grilled fish. Kimjang is the seasonal making and sharing of winter kimchi, typically in late autumn, now recognised by UNESCO as intangible heritage.

They are the domestic norm, paired with a spoon. First-timers are not judged for asking for wood, but metal is not a tourist stunt. Capsicum reached Korea after the late-sixteenth-century wars and trade. Older white kimchi styles never disappeared. Korean cuisine, or 한식 (hansik), is built on rice, soup and a ring of banchan — kimchi, namul greens, jeon pancakes — rather than a single plated entree. Gochujang, doenjang and ganjang supply the fermented bass line; gochugaru supplies the heat.

Jeolla namul, Gyeongsang raw-fish hoe, and the Pyongyang naengmyeon tradition show how sharply the peninsula splits. Barbecue (gogi-gui) made samgyeopsal and galbi exportable, but the everyday table is still jjigae stew, leftover rice and last night's kimchi. Street rows in Seoul and Busan sell tteokbokki, odeng fish cakes and hotteok. Kimjang, the late-autumn kimchi-making season, was inscribed by UNESCO in 2013 and still organises family labour more than any restaurant ranking.