now one of my favorite fermented dishes
is now at the center of a spat
between south korea and china the rao
over this kimchi and whether
it is chinese or korean kimchi according
to the un
is the korean name for preserved
vegetables seasoned with spices and
fermented seafood
cabbage kimchi being one of the most
common versions
but chinese state-run newspaper global
times claimed that china had received
an international certification for
kimchi
but what it had received was one for pao
thai
chinese style salted fermented
vegetables
the chinese claim over kimchi didn't go
down well in south korea
prompting even the agriculture ministry
to issue a clarification
that kimchi shouldn't be confused with
paotsai
if the saying holds true that you are
what you eat
then koreans are kimchi 95
of them eat the spicy pickled cabbage
every day
that's 2 million tons annually even its
preparation is a celebrated ritual
so reports that china had secured
international certification
for a comparable product was something
many koreans found
hard to digest
i read a media story that china now says
kimchi is theirs
and that they're making an international
standard for it
it's absurd i'm worried that they might
steal other cultural goods
not just kimchi
a similar chinese pickle called paotsai
was recently certified
by the international organization for
standardization
or iso which pointed out the standard
does not
apply to kimchi but
china's state-run global times devoured
the news
hailing the new standard for the quote
kimchi industry led by china
caught by surprise china's foreign
ministry
recognized the picant situation and
called for more diplomacy
is there an argument about this i'm not
aware of this
uh either i think there has been some
disagreement online yes
is that right maybe we should go and ask
our colleagues in the south korean
embassy
about where's the argument i think we
should have
more cooperation and sharing
the perceived cultural and culinary
appropriation
also has some koreans asking who's to
blame
i don't think that korea is handling the
situation that well
it's important to make our own food
appealing to people around the world
if we don't do that that's our problem
not china
the kimchi clash may be cooling down
but it's still packed with emotion
so lots to digest on the plate here
let's bring in dr
seojin lim she's a senior lecturer at
the university
of central lancashire dr lim why are
south koreans taking this to heart
oh the thing is that the kimchi is
something like
a cultural thing rather than just a food
in korea
so in korea for example we don't have a
serve
served meals like by one by one but we
have
all food at the same time on one table
with the side dishes
and kimchi is the main side dish and
it's there always
and for example you know for myself i
eat kimchi every day and without kimchi
i can't even think about
what i can have and if i can't have
kimchi for
for example for like a week then i feel
like i'm really
missing kimchi so it is something
embedded in our life in korea
and you know it has a history and we
just you know talk about kimchi
pretty much and you know even before
winter time
every single family you know we we need
to make
kimchi we have this process and have
kind of tradition to make kimchi
but you know when when you think about
for example
in italy you know the pasta and the
olives are there but you know
if other countries claim that this
tradition is their own ones then
that would be really disturbing so this
is kind of that
china this time claims that the iso
international
standard organization uh
gave them their certification about
chinese kimchi so-called from chinese
side which is a pao chai
that is a pickled vegetable rather than
kimchi kimchi is like a fermented um
vegetable so that is why it's so
bothering for south koreans
to call the pickled one as kimchi which
is really different from kimchi itself
what do you see is the reason behind
this chinese attempt in a sense
to claim kimchi as their own
it looks like chinese do not claim
kimchi as its
own like fat but chinese by having this
certification for their pao chai
they included kimchi as a part of this
series of different vegetables in a way
and also this is as i say a part of the
cultural diplomacy
and having all this food in the region
as a part of chinese
originals then that kind of makes
their way to go beyond their country
itself
so that is why the korean government is
so much
alerted as well about that do you
see that this feud over food will
continue
in the near future
um it's not the new um for example like
19 years ago something like that as i
remember correctly we
already had the similar kind of dispute
before as well
so the chinese food and korean food we
have similar choices and the differences
but kimchi is so unique for for our
culture
and society so we already had this kind
of disputed before but
now uh the even korean government does
not um
consider it as a kimchi i mean the
chinese pao chai
dr lim pleasure talking to you about
kimchi instead of
north korean nuclear policy that we
normally discuss
thank you so much thank you very much