Kimchi wars: Korean regulators find food-poisoning bacteria on Chinese imports after viral footage sparked concerns

A type of bacteria from the same family of pathogens as that which causes plague has been detected by South Korean food regulators in kimchi imported from China , a move that is likely to fuel further social media clashes over the origins of the popular fermented vegetable dish.

Yersinia enterocolitica – which causes a rare form of food poisoning known as yersiniosis that the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention say kills 35 people in the US every year – was found on 15 kimchi products imported from China out of a sample of 289, Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety said on Tuesday. Yersinia pestis, which causes plague, is from the same genus of bacteria.

Symptoms of yersiniosis vary by age but tend to include fever, abdominal pain that can be confused with appendicitis and bloody diarrhoea, especially in children. In rare cases, skin rashes and sepsis can result.

Korea’s food safety ministry said in a statement that the “substandard” imported kimchi had not made it to market as inspections were carried out as part of the customs process, adding that it had “ordered importers to send the products back to China or discard them”.

Further inspections will be carried out when products made by the Chinese companies involved are imported in future, the ministry said, with Beijing requested to take the necessary measures to improve the companies’ hygiene practices.

Two out of four Chinese salt-cured cabbage products were also found to have used dehydroacetate, a preservative that is not permitted in Korea.

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Korean and Chinese social media users have been embroiled in a series of arguments known as the “kimchi wars” since late last year over the origins of the fermented vegetable dish whose popularity is gaining worldwide.

Kimchi is often thought of as an iconic Korean food, with kimjang – the process by which the dish is made and shared – inscribed as part of Korea’s Intangible Cultural Heritage by Unesco in 2013.

But South Korea reportedly imported some 68,000 tonnes of kimchi from China in the first three months of this year, and relies upon imported kimchi to meet about 35 per cent of its demand.

Regulators carried out their unscheduled inspections of imported kimchi and kimchi-related ingredients from March 12 to May 7 after footage reportedly showing a cabbage-processing plant in China went viral in South Korea, sparking food safety concerns.

In the video clips, a half-naked man can be seen wading through a pool of sludge-coloured liquid filled with cabbages as he transfers them into the scoop of an excavator.

Other footage shows men in work boots standing atop the vegetables before the pool, which appears to be nothing more than a hole in the ground covered in plastic sheeting, is filled with the liquid.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=KP3xf_A14NI&feature=emb_logo[/embed]

Korean authorities scrambled to allay concerns in March after the footage gained widespread attention, stressing that the cabbages shown in the clips were not imported to South Korea.

But according to local media, kimchi imports from China still fell 31 per cent month on month to 18,000 tonnes in April.

This article was first published in South China Morning Post.