Patent ID: 7127911

Claim:
A kimchi refrigerator, comprising: a cabinet to define an external appearance of the kimchi refrigerator, the cabinet having a storage compartment to store food, the storage compartment being opened at a top thereof to form an opening and being cooled by cooling elements; a lid hinged to a predetermined portion of the cabinet to selectively close the opening of the cabinet; and a hinge unit to hinge the lid to the predetermined portion of the cabinet, with first and second cam units included at corresponding ends of the hinge unit to mount to both sides of the lid to rotatably open or close the lid, wherein the hinge unit comprises: a hinge casing having a longitudinal open hinge channel at each end thereof to mount the first and second cam units to both ends of the hinge casing; and a hinge cap disposed at each end of the hinge casing to cover the open hinge channel, thus preventing each of the first and second cam units from being removed from the hinge channel, and wherein each of the first and second cam units comprises: a stationary cam having a hinge projection at a first end thereof, and having a cam part at a second end thereof, the hinge projection passing through the hinge cap to be mounted to the lid and the cam part having an irregular form that is generally cylindrical shape with twisted troughs; a movable cam having a plurality of cam projections at a first end thereof to correspond to the irregular form of the cam part; and an elastic member to elastically bias a second end of the movable cam, thus allowing the movable cam to be retractably set in the hinge channel according to the interaction between the cam part having the irregular form and the cam projections of the movable cam.