I've made vegetarian kimchi dozens of times and you can get away without it. Plenty of purists have every right to tear me apart here. But as a vegetarian, betw

I've made vegetarian kimchi dozens of times and you can get away without it. Plenty of purists have every right to tear me apart here. But as a vegetarian, between 1. giving up one's principles, 2. having no kimchi or 3, staying true to one's principles and still having kimchi that's 85% as good, I'll take the latter, thank you very much. If you're not veg you can use prepared seafoods - cured versions, sauces, etc to get most of the way there. As a vegetarian I use soybean paste to sub in for the umami flavor and some of the salt / fermentable sugars I'm otherwise missing.