The Kimchi Wars

When two countries share a related history, there must be some disputes on different areas – cultural heritage is surely one of them.

As we all know, Kimchi means everything to South Korea; but they also place an increasing value on the nation’s relationship with China, a country Korea fought against in the Korea War during the 1950s.  Starting in 2002, Korean kimchi companies started to cooperate with Chinese counterparts in China’s Liaoning and Shandong.  It is said that around 60% of the restaurants in Seoul said the Kimchi they used are from China.  While even when Chinese kimchi is made according to high-quality production standard, it still tastes different from Korean Kimchi easily.  The dispute on Kimchi’s headstream nation has continued for so many years between Korea, China and also Japan.  While the war of Kimchi started from Korea’s application for the list of world intangible culture heritage in March 2013.  I have reason to believe that one of the motives of the application is the commercial object from those Kimchi company.  But since Korea has too much imported items to rely on China and the two counties share common interests in various field, such as economic and regional security, we believe that the war would be fading out in the near future.

 

http://busanhaps.com/article/kimchi-wars-china-assault-korean-kimchi

 

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