I’ve been wondering about this since I was introduced to Korean kimchi: If the chile comes from the Americas, how did it get to Korea? Best answer I could come up with was the Portuguese, well or the Spanish, as Portugal was subsumed into Spain for a while right around the time that the Portuguese had Korean armies in Japan (late 1580s to 1600 — when the shogunate expelled all foreigners).

But what do I know? Interesting that there’s a book with likely some primary source references (I don’t have any Japanese or Korean). I’ll have a look.

BTW, yes, I’m aware that not all Korean kimchi is hot with chiles. I happen to have developed a taste for the hot stuff — and my Korean friends tell me that the red/spicy kimchi is pretty typical of what they get in Seoul and Pusan.