When talking about global benchmarks, people use the expression "global standard." A standard means a "norm." A standard is a promise that spans the economy, industry, and technology. Technological progress can create the need for a "standard," but a single standard can also drive a leap of revolutionary scale. The Korean Agency for Technology and Standards and ChosunBiz selected the "top 10 standards that changed the world" and the "top 10 standards that changed the lives and economy of Koreans," based on a survey of experts from industry, academia, research, and the media, and take a fresh look at the role of standards. [Editor's note]
Korea Gallup said that when it asked 5,251 people ages 13 and older from Mar. to Jul. last year whether they had a kimchi refrigerator at home, 85% said they did. The ownership rate was lower than for air conditioners (98%) and microwave ovens (95%) but higher than for water purifiers (78%) and air purifiers (66%).
Even amid changes in household structure, such as the rise of single-person households, the kimchi refrigerator has kept its place as an essential appliance for Koreans. Many people buy a kimchi refrigerator to keep store-bought kimchi crunchy for a long time even if they do not make kimjang. A variety of products are also on the market, including compact kimchi refrigerators for single-person households and models that can store rice and vegetables together.
According to the German market research firm GfK, sales of kimchi refrigerators by domestic corporations reached 1.7 trillion won in 2020 and are estimated to have edged down since. Among home appliances, cases in which annual sales exceed 1 trillion won from domestic sales alone with almost no exports are rare.
Korea's first kimchi refrigerator was launched in 1984 by Goldstar (now LG Electronics). Although refrigerator penetration was close to 100% at the time, many households still kept kimchi in onggi jars. That was because many people lived in dwellings where they could bury onggi in the yard. In addition, the cooling method used in refrigerators was suited to drier Western foods and was not optimal for storing kimchi, which has a lot of brine.
Goldstar's kimchi refrigerator adopted a "direct cooling method," which attaches a cooler to the wall to lower the internal air. Compared with the "indirect cooling method," which brings in external cold air, this method better preserves food moisture and produces less mechanical noise. Although it was an innovative product, it did not sell well at first. People living in houses with yards had no reason to buy a kimchi refrigerator when they already had onggi jars.
The era of "one kimchi refrigerator per household" arrived in 1995 when Mando Machinery (now WINIA) released the kimchi refrigerator "Dimchae." Dimchae's product quality was strong, but the rapid spread of apartments as new towns were developed also played a role. With no place left to bury onggi jars, households needed a separate space to store kimchi.
As kimchi refrigerators became mainstream, the need arose to unify storage temperatures, storage capacities, and noise standards, which varied by manufacturer. In response, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy's Korean Agency for Technology and Standards (now the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards) established the world's first kimchi refrigerator standard in 2000. The standard included requirements such as: maintaining a refrigeration temperature of 3 C or lower continuously; producing noise at 40 decibels (dB) or lower; and reaching a refrigeration temperature of 3 C within 180 hours.
With the establishment of the standard, kimchi refrigerators became a steady seller in the home appliance industry, with more than 1 million units sold annually in Korea alone. The spread of kimchi refrigerators expanded the packaged kimchi market. It also changed kitchen routines by making "summer kimjang"—preparing kimchi before the rainy season when cabbage prices surge—possible.
Meanwhile, since 2014, the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards has required corporations to indicate the actual kimchi storage space that a kimchi refrigerator can hold. This followed a Korea Consumer Agency (KCA) survey showing that the actual storage capacity of kimchi refrigerators was only 40% of the labeled capacity.