Kimchi is fermented vegetables, and early Korean versions were not the spicy dish people know today. Records from the Three Kingdoms period mention jars used to ferment vegetables, and by the Goryeo period radish kimchi was common. Chili peppers came from the Americas through Portuguese traders, first appearing in Korean records in a 1614 encyclopedia, and only became standard in kimchi in the 19th century. Napa cabbage kimchi came later still, after the vegetable reached Korea at the end of the 1800s. Traditionally it was made in late autumn and buried in brown ceramic onggi pots to ferment through winter, before refrigerators existed. The communal practice, called gimjang, was added to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2013.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.