Methodology — The Kimchi-jjigae Index
- Source
- Korea Price Information Portal (Chamgagyeok) — dining-out price survey (한국소비자원 참가격 외식비 가격동향), surveyed and published by the Korea Consumer Agency (한국소비자원) at price.go.kr. Survey month: 2026-09. Retrieved 2026-10-17.
- How the ranking works
- There is no formula. For each menu, regions are sorted by the surveyed average shop price, most expensive first. We reproduce the agency’s numbers; we do not weight, adjust, or editorialize them. Pork belly uses the agency’s 200g-normalized price — raw shop portions vary too much to compare.
- Update cadence
- The source publishes monthly. We refresh with the latest completed survey month and label it on the index page.
Limits worth knowing before you cite this
- An average is not a menu you can walk into. The figure averages surveyed shops across a whole province or city. It does not show an individual restaurant price or the distribution within a region, so it should not be used as a quote for a particular shop.
- Regions are provinces, not neighbourhoods. A single “Seoul” value cannot show differences between districts or commercial areas. Sejong has no column in the source survey.
- This is a domestic index, not a global one. The Big Mac Index compares countries; this compares Korean regions. A global version for Korean staples (Shin Ramyun or Buldak abroad) would need price data that no official source publishes — so we do not publish one either.