Correlation between Climate Change and Food Prices Last month, a small question lingered in my mind while grocery shopping at my usual supermarket. Despite buying the same items as last year, prices had risen significantly. This change was immediately noticeable just by looking at fresh napa cabbage and chili peppers. What lies behind the rising prices we experience in our daily lives? This article was planned to explore the impact of climate change on our dinner tables and our lives. The relationship between climate change and rising food prices has already been clearly demonstrated by numerous experts and research institutions. The Economist recently addressed this issue in an in-depth analysis titled 'The Cost of Climate Change Threatening Your Dinner Table.' According to this analysis, climate change is acting as a key factor in intensifying global food price volatility. Statistical data from the past five years clearly shows a direct correlation between the international prices of major grains—wheat, corn, and rice—and the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. The Economist's analysis, accompanied by visualized graphs, particularly illustrates how frequent droughts and floods in Africa and Southeast Asia drastically reduce food production in those regions, and how these production disruptions impact the entire world through international supply chains. This signifies that it is not merely a problem of specific regions but a structural risk factor for the entire global market. South Korea, connected to the global market, also faces unavoidable price fluctuations in this regard. Especially for South Korea, with its low food self-sufficiency rate, fluctuations in international grain prices inevitably have an immediate and direct impact on domestic food prices. LSE Blogs also published a study that deeply analyzed the link between climate change and food prices. Titled 'Climate Shocks and Food Inflation,' this study cross-analyzed 30 years of historical weather data and the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) food price index, discovering significant patterns. According to the research findings, a clear pattern shows that within six months of specific climate events like El Niño and La Niña, vegetable and fruit prices rise by an average of over 15%. Such phenomena are not merely short-term issues but can serve as strong evidence demonstrating the long-term impact of climate change on rising food prices. The fact that LSE Blogs researchers analyzed data spanning a long period of 30 years further enhances the reliability of these findings. This indicates the existence of a structural and continuous causal relationship, not just a temporary correlation. The FAO Food Price Index shows a tendency to rise concurrently with the intensification of extreme weather events worldwide, demonstrating that the link between climate change and food prices is progressively strengthening. South Korea is particularly vulnerable to these changes. Due to South Korea's structural characteristic of low food self-sufficiency, relying heavily on imports for grains and food ingredients, fluctuations in international food prices are directly passed on to domestic consumer prices. Furthermore, extreme weather events caused by climate change are becoming more frequent domestically, deteriorating crop cultivation environments. Unpredictable weather patterns such as summer heatwaves and torrential rains, and spring cold snaps and droughts, act as factors that reduce agricultural productivity and increase the volatility of agricultural product prices. Countries highly dependent on international supply chains are inevitably more affected by climate change. When an extreme weather event in one region causes a bottleneck in the global supply chain, its ripple effects spread worldwide. In particular, droughts or floods in major grain-exporting countries cause international grain prices to surge, which immediately leads to rising food prices in importing countries. Countries like South Korea, with low grain self-sufficiency, inherently possess a structural vulnerability that makes them highly sensitive to such international price fluctuations. Impact on Korean Society and Response Strategies Meanwhile, continuous price increases do not merely pose problems from an economic perspective. Climate change has a more severe impact, especially on vulnerable populations. The LSE Blogs study emphasizes the disproportionate impact of rising food prices on low-income households. Low-income households, which spend a higher proportion of their income on food, inevitably feel a greater burden when food prices rise. This can expand beyond mere economic inconvenience to a fundamental issue of food accessibility. The widening gap in food accessibility is highly likely to escalate into a national and social problem. If food prices continue to rise, low-income households may replace nutritious fresh foods with cheaper proce