Main image via Babel & Ting Tings Nest
When you think about kimchi the first thing that comes to mind is that it’s a Korean dish, but South Koreans are now angry after a China outlet claimed their national dish!
Beijing recently won a global certification awarded by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) for their dish “pao cai” - a pickled dish that some would say is China’s version of kimchi.
But a “kimchi war” has sparked between netizens from South Korea and China after Global Times, a state-run media outlet, reportedly described the certification as “an international standard for the kimchi industry led by China.”
Many South Koreans are accusing China for stealing their national dish, with one user on Naver.com saying “It’s total nonsense, what a thief stealing our culture!”.
“I read a media story that China now says Kimchi is theirs, and that they are making international standard for it, It’s absurd,” another resident from Seoul said.
“I’m worried that they might steal Hanbok and other cultural contents, not just Kimchi,” said Kim Seol-ha, a 28-year old in Seoul.
Netizens from China however are arguing back and saying that most of the Kimchi that South Koreans eat is made in China anyways.
“Well, if you don’t meet the standard, then you’re not kimchi,” one user wrote on Weibo.
Another user said that, “even the pronunciation of kimchi originated from Chinese, what else is there to say.”
South Korea’s agriculture ministry addressed the issue by saying that the ISO approved standard does not apply to Kimchi in a statement.
The statement read, “It is inappropriate to report (about Pao Cai winning the ISO) without differentiating Kimchi from Pao Cai of China’s Sichuan.”
The ministry said that the food standard for kimchi was already recognised by the international food standard committee under the UN in 2011 and that pao cai is a completely different dish.
The ISO document that was approved by five ISO members from India, Iran, Serbia, Turkey and China specifically said that the standard for paocai does not apply to kimchi.
The confusion supposedly arose because the Chinese government called kimchi “paocai” too which is a direct translation for “pickled vegetables” and refused to change the name after South Korea's government proposed for it to be changed to “xin qi” instead, which means “spicy or sour”.
Either way, kimchi is definitely recognised as a Korean dish and the two should be looked at as different dishes entirely!
What are your thoughts on it? Let us know!
Info via Next Shark
Filled Under :
*We reserve the right to delete comments that contain inappropriate content.