For most Koreans, it is the least glamorous thing on the table. A small stack of crisp, salty, paper-thin green-black sheets sits next to the rice, and nobody thinks twice about it. It is called gim. Yet Korean seaweed exports passed $1 billion for the first time in 2025, and the humble side dish now out-earns every other product the country pulls from the sea.
In fact, the trade has grown so fast that officials have given it a nickname borrowed from the chip industry: the “black semiconductor.” Meanwhile, the boom has created an awkward problem at home. As foreigners buy more, Koreans are paying record prices for their own everyday snack.
So how did a rice wrapper become a billion-dollar business? And can a crop that needs cold water survive a warming sea? Here is the full story.
First, the basics. Gim is a red seaweed that turns dark green when dried. English speakers may know it as laver, and Japanese speakers as nori. It grows on nets strung across shallow coastal water, mostly along the southwest coast in South Jeolla Province. Wando, Goheung, Jindo and Haenam are the best-known farming counties.
The season is short. Gim likes cold water, ideally between 5 and 15 degrees Celsius. As a result, farmers seed their nets in autumn and harvest through the winter. After that, the wet seaweed is washed, pressed into thin rectangles and dried, much like making paper.
From there, the product splits in two:
One more term is worth knowing. Traders count gim in sok, a bundle of 100 sheets. Korea produces roughly 150 million bundles in a typical year. In other words, that is about 15 billion sheets.
Gim is not a new idea. Koreans have gathered wild laver from coastal rocks for well over a thousand years, and old records list it among the local products sent to the royal court. Farming came later. According to a popular account, a man named Kim Yeo-ik began cultivating it on branches set in the tidal flats of Gwangyang in the 1600s. Some even say the food took its name from his family name.
For centuries after that, gim stayed a seasonal, regional product. Then, in the twentieth century, floating nets and mechanical dryers changed everything. Output rose, prices fell, and seasoned gim became a fixture of school lunchboxes and home-cooked meals. For that reason, most Koreans still think of it as cheap comfort food rather than an export star.
Exports, in contrast, are a recent story. As late as 2010, overseas sales were only around $100 million a year. Since then, they have grown roughly tenfold. Few traditional foods anywhere have scaled that quickly, and almost none have done so without changing the product itself.
The growth curve is steep. In 2022, exports stood at $648 million. By 2025 they had reached about $1.134 billion, according to the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries. That is a 13.7% jump in a single year and nearly double the level of five years earlier.
The milestone itself came on November 20, 2025, when the running total crossed $1 billion for the first time. Korean gim now ships to 167 countries.
To put that in context, Korea’s total seafood exports were $3.3 billion last year. Therefore, gim alone accounted for roughly one-third of everything. No fish, squid or shellfish comes close.
Volume tells only part of the story, however. Export volume rose 13.7% to 106.99 million bundles. At the same time, the average export price climbed 32.1% to $29.80 per kilogram. Put simply, the world is buying more gim and paying more for each sheet.
Interestingly, no single country dominates. The customer list is broad, and that is one reason the industry feels confident.
Based on the figures available when the $1 billion mark was crossed, the ranking looked like this:
Each market buys for a different reason. Japan, for instance, has its own nori industry, but poor harvests have pushed buyers toward Korean dried sheets. China is in a similar position. Thailand, in contrast, imports Korean raw material and turns it into fried seaweed snacks that sell across Southeast Asia.
The United States is the most interesting case. There, gim is not a side dish at all. Instead, it is a snack, sold in small plastic trays next to the chips. Seasoned gim makes up 94% of Korean seaweed shipments to the US.
Moreover, American demand received a policy boost. A 15% US tariff on seasoned seaweed was removed in November 2025, which left the main export product duty-free. Consequently, Korean brands gained a price edge at exactly the moment demand was peaking.
Several trends arrived at once.
First, the health halo. Seasoned gim is low in calories, plant-based and gluten-free. For American parents hunting for a lunchbox snack, that is an easy sell. In addition, it fits neatly into vegan and “better-for-you” aisles without any reformulation.
Second, Korean food went mainstream. Kimbap, the seaweed rice roll, became a viral hit in US freezer aisles in 2023. We traced that story in our report on Korea’s frozen food empire. Once shoppers got used to seaweed wrapped around rice, a plain pack of gim stopped looking exotic. Similarly, the rise of instant noodles abroad, which we covered in Korean ramyeon exports, opened shelf space for other Korean staples.
Third, pop culture did its usual work. Korean dramas and films show characters eating gim with rice constantly. More recently, the Netflix animation “KPop Demon Hunters” put Korean snacks in front of a huge young audience. Officials openly credit the Korean Wave for part of the surge.
Finally, the competition stumbled. Only three countries farm this kind of seaweed at scale: Korea, Japan and China. Warm seas hurt harvests in Japan and China in recent seasons. As a result, buyers everywhere turned to Korea, which had supply when its neighbors did not.
For decades, the Korean laver industry was a patchwork of small family processors. That is changing quickly, because the big food groups have noticed the margins.
Daesang, best known for its Jongga kimchi brand, has become a leader in gim. Its seaweed sales reached about 200.4 billion won in 2025, more than triple the 2020 figure. The company runs factories in Indonesia and Vietnam with a combined capacity of 1,500 tons a year. In Vietnam, for example, it sells seaweed snacks fortified with iron and calcium and markets them as children’s nutrition. Furthermore, Daesang built the first private seaweed research center in Korea and sorts raw gim into nine quality grades.
CJ sells gim under its Bibigo brand in the US and about 80 other countries. However, its most important move is not a product. It is a building. CJ Foods scheduled an August 2026 groundbreaking for a commercial land-based gim cultivation facility in Cheonan, an inland city. We will come back to why that matters.
Dongwon, the tuna giant, owns Yangban, one of the best-known gim brands in Korean supermarkets. Alongside it, dozens of mid-sized specialists supply private-label packs to foreign retailers. Many shoppers abroad are eating Korean gim without ever seeing a Korean brand name.
Port cities are benefiting too. Mokpo, a harbor town in the southwest, reported in July that its gim exports alone had passed $100 million, up 37%. Therefore, the boom is one of the few export stories that puts money directly into rural coastal Korea.
Here is the uncomfortable part. Success abroad has made gim expensive in Korea.
In late January 2026, the average retail price of ten sheets of mid-grade dried gim hit 1,515 won. That was the first time the figure had ever passed 1,500 won. In other words, a single sheet now costs about 150 won. Korean headlines summed it up with a sigh: “my side dish” had become a luxury.
The official statistics agree. The consumer price index for gim rose 14.9% from a year earlier, the steepest increase among major seafood items. For comparison, overall inflation was 2.1%.
The mechanism is simple. Supply is more or less fixed by the size of the farms and the length of the winter. Meanwhile, foreign buyers pay in dollars, and a weak won makes those dollars worth more. As a result, processors can earn more by exporting, so domestic buyers must match the export price. One fisheries official admitted that this structure makes price cuts difficult.
Even the BBC picked up the story, describing the squeeze on Korean households as the flip side of a global hit. It is a pattern we have seen before. Our piece on the Korean kimchi crisis describes how another national staple got caught between climate, cost and trade.
For small restaurants, the pressure is obvious. Kimbap shops, for example, use gim by the box, so every price rise lands directly on their costs.
Price is the short-term worry. Temperature is the long-term one.
Gim needs cold water, and Korean waters are warming faster than the global average. According to The Korea Times, high-temperature sea alerts rose from 22 five years ago to 71 last year. When autumn water stays warm, farmers must seed later. Then the season shrinks, yields fall and quality suffers.
Korean fishers already know how this story can end. Squid, once the signature catch of the east coast, has collapsed as waters warmed, as we explained in our report on the Korean squid fishing crisis. Naturally, nobody in the gim business wants to be next.
There is a second problem as well. The same warm seas that damaged Japanese and Chinese harvests handed Korea its recent advantage. However, that advantage is fragile. If Chinese output recovers, prices could drop. If Korean waters warm further, Korea becomes the one with the shortage.
So the industry is trying something that sounds strange. It wants to grow seaweed indoors.
Land-based cultivation means raising gim in tanks, with controlled temperature, light and nutrients. In theory, the benefits are large. Production can run all year instead of only in winter. Quality becomes consistent. Moreover, contamination risks such as heavy metals are easier to manage.
CJ has been working on the idea since 2018. It achieved lab-scale cultivation in 2021 and patented a variety designed for land farming in early 2026. Its Cheonan facility is due to be finished in the first half of 2027. The company calls it a testing ground for industrial-scale production.
Others are close behind. Daesang has run successful trials in Goheung County. In addition, the government has committed 35 billion won to land-based aquaculture research, with commercialization targeted for 2029.
Nevertheless, the economics are unproven. Ocean farming is cheap, because the sea provides water, nutrients and cooling for free. A tank does not. Therefore, land-grown gim will probably start as a premium product for export brands rather than a replacement for the ocean harvest.
In June 2026, the oceans ministry published its roadmap. The headline target is $1.8 billion in exports by 2030.
To get there, the plan includes:
There is also a branding goal. Officials want the world to say “gim,” not “nori” or “laver.” Accordingly, the plan promotes GIM as the English product name. At the same time, the Codex Alimentarius Commission has approved work on a global standard for seaweed products, which Korea hopes to shape.
For investors, Korean gim is an unusual food story. Demand is global and still growing. Supply is limited by geography. Consequently, pricing power sits with producers, which is rare in packaged food.
On the other hand, the risks are easy to name:
The listed names to watch are the diversified food groups: Daesang, CJ CheilJedang and Dongwon F&B. None is a pure seaweed play, however, so gim is one growth driver among several.
For visitors, the practical advice is simpler. Gim is light, cheap by foreign standards and easy to pack. As a result, it is among the most popular souvenirs from Korea. Supermarkets and even neighborhood convenience stores carry dozens of varieties, from classic sesame oil to wasabi and olive oil. If you want the full range, look for gift boxes in department store food halls.
If you are new to Korean gim, a few habits are worth copying. First, eat it with rice. Koreans lay a sheet on top of a spoonful of warm rice and pinch it into a tiny wrap with chopsticks. Second, try it crumbled. Shredded gim, known as gim-garu, goes over noodles, fried rice and soups. Third, keep it dry. Once a pack is opened, the sheets soften within hours, so most households store them with a silica packet or in the freezer. Finally, check the label. “Jaerae” gim is thin and delicate, while “dol” gim is thicker and crunchier, and “gimbap” gim is unseasoned and made for rolling.
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