Coming home today, I noticed that with the brisk autumn weather taking hold, the corner shop near my home has once again fired up the mandu steamers. With much anticipation, I went up to the middle-aged man who runs the joint and asked for 10 kimchi mandu to go. No can do, he said. Since the Chinese kimchi scare, he explained, he would have to make kimchi mandu with relatively high-priced Korean kimchi, and what’s more, the general public was distrustful of kimchi products in general, so kimchi mandu were unlikely to sell, regardless of where the kimchi used originated from. So for the time being, it was meat mandu and only meat mandu.
The Chinese kimchi scare — the world will never be the same.
19 Comments
Glad to hear you’re back Marmot, hope you enjoyed Hawaii. In any case, I wanted to ask you, or really any Korean speakers about a particular website. http://dailychina.net/ appears to be a Korean news website dedicated to news about China. However, despite not being able to read it, I am under the impression that it generally carries non-standard dissident news and criticisms of assorted sort (e.g. Free Tibet). The specifics I want to know but can’t since I don’t read Korean, is that is the website associated with Falun Dafa (Falun Gong)? Are there any mentions in Korean of the “nine commentaries” or possibly mass party resignations? Are many of the stories translated peices from the Epoch Times? Inquiring party shills want to know!
Jing -
I checked the site and the very first entry on the left hand column was “Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party”.
What a wretched menu choice before the Chinese people: news filtered or fabricated by the Falun Gong or news filtered or fabricated by the CCP.
Marmot -
You’ll see kimchi still cures Avian flu, acording to the Chosun Ilbo.
Not ‘cures’, but ‘prevents’. Remember that there’s a difference.
I just glanced at the site briefly, but I think that site is made by ethnic Koreans in China, or ethnic Koreans from China living in Korea.
there are a bunch of small businesses (those with under $200,000 US) subsidized (receiving preferential loans with about 0% interest) by the government which import kimchi from north korea. evidently, it’s not just the usually water kimchi but also the standard fare. perhaps this chinese kimchi scare will boost their businesses.
too late to hatch an obvious conspiracy theory on this one…
is the “Your comment is awaiting moderation.” comment a new addition or have i just never seen it before? you’re not gonna make me change my hair, are ya’?
Not that I buy it, Kimbob, but this seems to be touting a cure….
Among the many miraculous properties attributed to the Korean staple side dish kimchi may be the ability to cure bird flu, Seoul National University scientists say. A research team lead by Prof. Kang Sa-ouk said Tuesday they created a food mixture containing a lactic ferment from kimchi that is effective against the avian flu and sent it to Indonesia, where the virus is rampant.
In March, Kang and his team fed an extract of the lactic ferment found in the pickled cabbage dish — dubbed Leuconostoc kimchii — to a group of chickens infected with Newcastle Disease, avian flu and other respiratory illnesses. After one week almost all of the chickens had recovered completely. (Chosun English website)
Oops. then again I just read this article which I missed:
Kimchi cures avian flu
http://english.chosun.com/w21d.....10009.html
There you go, kimchi cures bird flu, and prevents SARS.
Kimchi beats SARS.
Chinese lead beats kimchi.
SARS beats the Chinese.
We have a replacement for ?°??, ?°??, ?³΄.
Kimbob, that is an excellent link. thank you.
But I really have to wonder…
I mean, watching North Korean Central Broadcasting news snippets, there were news that DPRK scientists discovered that those who consumed kimchi (or garlic or potato, choose the favorite produce of the week for KJI) had less incidence for some ailment XYZ.
What I was thinking at the time was, “well… Kimchi probably IS a cure for malnutrition.”
I think that kimchi or any vegetable maybe a good source of vitamins/minerals for chickens that are in overcrowded caged condition with what is probably poor feed. But I’m probably just projecting my own limited world views on this.
But I do remember talking to some Korean people before about the high incidence for stomache cancer in Korea and some of my Korean friends attributed it to Korean love for spicy foods and fermented foods (i.e. kimchi). Ya gotta wonder, what about Korean love for nicotine and second hand smoke?
I guess, it justs goes to show that people make the pictures to fit to their world views. And other people will even interprete the said picture to fit their own world views.
The Chinese kimchi scare ? the world will never be the same.
The Korean psyche is quite fickle. This will soon wane only to resurface in a few years…sort of like a Korean…wave.
Well, if a Korean newspaper says that kimchi cures bird flu, SARS, AIDS, then it must be true. So glad I read those stories about fan death and quit running my fan with the window closed. To think I had risked sudden death for twenty years!
It is true that the Koreans and the Japanese have high rates of stomach cancer owing to high consumption of salted vegetables and fish. Salty foods are also linked to high blood pressure.
Is the Mandu??? ???? in China??
Fermi — Yep, those would be the ones.
There was a time in the 1980s when Korean people got very angry to find out USFK members didn’t even touch Korean bottled water. USFK members drank imported “American” bottled water only.
In 2005, KFDA reported at press conference that Chinese Kimchi harms health not long ago, and now the agency took the opposite stance on Chinese Kimchi. The real problem is that KFDA has not given a guarantee of fairness in its judgment. KFDA does not stick up for Korean people’s health, they rather defend the “economic cause” of food industry.
KFDA and media collaboration in attacking Chinese agricultural and marine products has been going on for years. In the summer of 2000, it was lead pellets stuffed into blue crabs to increase their weight. Every evening on the news, viewers saw Korean inspectors prying open boxes of crabs to look for lead pellet contamination. I asked a Korean journalist, “Don’t you find it strange that all these lead crabs are turning up in Korea? I don’t remember hearing about lead crabs last year. Next year, it’ll be something else.” Sure enough, the following summer, it was some other fish scare.
Korean reporters are also fond of making unfavorable comparisons between local produce and Chinese imported versions, holding up together Korean garlic and Chinese garlic and praising the bigger, plumper, and fresher Korean garlic. When I made my first visit to a farmers’ market in China, I was astonished at the wonderfully large and beautiful looking cabbages, peppers, squashes, greens, watermelons, grapes, berries, and amazing fruits and vegetables that don’t grow in Korea.
hey dumbasses….kimchi is fucking korean. get your facts straight. no such thing as chinese kimchi.
Hey jungsu… Don’t read the Korean papers much, do you?
It’s kimchi made in China under Korean supervision, wee kyopo.
On a more positive note, the kimchi mandu have come back to the corner shop.