This dissertation explores the material, semiotic, and logistical making of “Koreanness” in kimchi from the perspectives of kimchi manufacturers and distributors in China, who reflect on and respond to the changing economic and political conditions across China and South Korea. Kimchi is a fermented vegetable dish widely produced and consumed in Korean communities, which has been manufactured on a massive scale in China for export since the early 2000s. Korean-Chinese (chosŏnjok) Kimchi manufacturers in China, who started their manufacturing business targeting South Korean kimchi markets, gradually turn their attention to the Chinese markets where they see a rapidly increasing demand for exotic foreign food products such as “Korean” kimchi. Throughout the transition, they employ various business strategies to materialize, present, and promote the Koreanness of their kimchi, which can be translated into economic value in the Chinese markets. In their efforts, kimchi manufacturers and distributors in China are challenged to reflect on how their consumers in China imagine the differences and distance between “Korea” and China. In this dissertation, I view the making of “Koreanness” as speculative efforts to produce commodity value, which conditions and is conditioned by the reconfiguration of nationalist imaginaries across South Korea and China. Nations function as foundational units in constructing imaginaries of the worlds, not only as communities with which people feel solidarity but also as the framework through which people make sense of their standing in the world through comparison. Consumers in China shape their imaginaries on economic and geopolitical orders of worlds as they navigate their consumer choices, comparing and evaluating products from various parts of the world. Entrepreneurs in the Chinese kimchi industry mobilize product design, marketing, and logistical strategies to make “Korea” accessible to consumers while reminding them of the distance and difference between “Korea” and China. Admittedly, the businesses face various disruptions to the “ordinary” processes in which nationalist imaginaries facilitate commodity value formation, such as boycotts, miscommunication, and bad smells. This dissertation is attuned to the frictions in the supply chains through which people articulate their normative expectations and understandings of markets, examining the coproduction of value and imaginaries in terms of how it works, it should work, and it does not work. Based on 13 months of fieldwork at a kimchi company in Qingdao, China, this dissertation engages with different scales in which the mobilities of commodities, people, and capital are coordinated for overcoming and performing the distance between “Korea” and China. The dissertation contributes to anthropological studies of market economies by analyzing the semiotic, material, and logistical formulation of commodity value. Methodologically, the dissertation explores the modes of imagination and mediation in which local(ized) encounters and practices are interconnected with macro-scale political economic dynamics. The dissertation also engages with current scholarship on Northeast Asia, contributing to understanding the economic, social, and political implications of “China’s rise” and the nature of nationalism in contemporary Northeast Asia.