What's in season in Korea right now
It is August in Korea, and 18 items are at their peak — fruit, vegetables, seafood and the mountain greens that only show up for a few weeks a year.
Korean peak seasons are set by the domestic harvest and catch, so they often land a month or more away from the northern-hemisphere norm. Strawberries, for instance, are a winter fruit here.
Fruit (8)
Melon
Netted muskmelon, treated in Korea as a gift fruit and priced accordingly. Ripe when the stem en...
Fig
Korean figs ripen soft and jammy on the tree rather than in transit, so the domestic season is s...
Peach
Korean peaches split into two camps: crisp, dense baekdo-style white peaches and soft, dripping...
Watermelon
The default Korean summer fruit — sold whole and halved everywhere from July. Look for a dull (n...
Plum
Korean plums are tart-skinned with sweet flesh, eaten chilled and whole. The season is brief and...
Korean Melon
Chamoe is the yellow, white-striped melon with crisp, mildly sweet flesh — closer to a cucumber-...
Tomato
Peak-season Korean tomatoes are eaten as fruit as often as vegetable — chilled with a little sug...
Grapes
August is grape month. Campbell Early gives the classic slip-skin, deep-purple Korean grape; Shi...
Vegetable (6)
Eggplant
Korean eggplant is slim, thin-skinned and quick to cook. Most often steamed and torn into a sesa...
Potato
Summer-harvested potatoes arrive waxy and moist, best steamed and eaten plain or crushed with bu...
Sweet Potato
Goguma is a Korean staple: dense, honey-sweet varieties roasted whole in foil or over coals. Aut...
Korean Zucchini
Aehobak is shorter and denser than Italian zucchini, with fewer seeds. Sliced into doenjang stew...
Cucumber
Peak-season Korean cucumbers are thin-skinned and crunchy — the base for oi-muchim, cold oi-naen...
Corn
Chewy waxy corn (chal-oksusu) is the Korean summer variety — starchy and glutinous rather than s...
Seafood (3)
Squid
Late-summer squid is thick-walled and sweet. Korean cooking uses it three ways — flash-grilled,...
Eel
Eel is Korea's summer stamina food, grilled over charcoal with a sweet-savory glaze and eaten wi...
Abalone
Farmed largely off Wando, abalone peaks in summer when it is plumpest. Served raw as sashimi, gr...
Greens & Herbs (1)
How to use this
Buying in season in Korea is mostly a price and flavour decision: at peak the same item is cheaper, sweeter or fattier, and stacked at the front of every market. If you are standing in a mart wondering whether something is worth buying today, check the month page for August above — or open the app, which answers the same question offline.