Persimmon Harvest and Gotgam Making in South Korea 2024
Fresh juicy persimmon is good, but dried fruit ('gotgam') might appeal to you even more
Best time: October–early December
Persimmons are the main treat of the autumn season in Korea. Locals eat them raw, add them to salads, and make persimmon jams, but most of all they enjoy dried persimmons, called 'gotgam', for its sweetness, and chewiness.
A great deal of gotgam is produced around Sangju, the city responsible for 70% of the overall persimmons harvest in Korea. Farmers gather fruit for about two weeks, then they peel them off with machines, and manually hang them one by one onto special dryers where they are being dried for the next two months with fans. Semi-dried persimmons are ready to eat in 40 days, but for true gotgam you have to wait for 60 days.
Persimmons are harvested between October and November, so that's when you can enjoy fresh fruit, and observe the process of gotgam making. By the end of November you can already savour semi-dried persimmon, and in early December—the long-awaited gotgam.
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