Using Chinese YouTubers for 'Kimchi Gongjeong'? ... Continuing Baseless Claims with '#ChineseFood' Hashtag Attached

[Image source = YouTube channel 'Liziqi']

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Eun-young] A popular YouTuber with 14 million subscribers, known for content introducing traditional Chinese culture, uploaded a video harvesting napa cabbage and making kimchi. The video included hashtags such as 'Chinese Cuisine' and 'Chinese Traditional Culture,' raising concerns that kimchi might be mistakenly perceived as a Chinese dish.

On the 9th, famous Chinese YouTuber Lizhi posted a video titled "The last episode of the 'Life Series': The life of white radish."

In the video, Lizhi is seen harvesting napa cabbage herself, salting it, and mixing it with red pepper powder seasoning to make kimchi. She also showed taking kimchi stored in a jangdok (fermentation jar) and completing a soup dish that appears to be kimchi jjigae (kimchi stew).

True to her reputation with 14 million subscribers, the video surpassed 1.79 million views within a day of upload and received over 130,000 likes.

The issue is that this process closely resembles Korea’s traditional kimjang (kimchi-making) practice. Korean netizens who saw the video expressed anger, mainly because Lizhi, who has introduced Chinese food and traditional culture primarily to foreigners, might inadvertently spread the misconception that kimchi is an indigenous Chinese dish.

Notably, Lizhi added hashtags such as 'Chinese Cuisine,' 'Chinese Food,' and '中華傳統文化' (Chinese Traditional Culture) to the video. This led netizens from various countries to respond with comments like "I want to learn more about Chinese culture" and "The video is beautiful." Only a small number of Korean netizens pointed out, "The food shown in the video is kimchi, a traditional Korean dish."

[Image source = YouTube channel 'Liziqi']

Some speculate that the sudden upload of a kimchi video by a famous Chinese YouTuber was a deliberate act. It is believed to be related to the recent controversy over 'pao cai' (泡菜).

In November last year, China’s state-run media Global Times reported that pao cai, a pickled vegetable originating from Sichuan Province, received international standard certification from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), stating that "China’s kimchi industry has become the standard for the international kimchi market."

Baidu, China’s largest internet encyclopedia, also made a controversial claim that China is the origin country of kimchi and that the vegetable pickling dish pao cai spread to Korea and became kimchi, which sparked global debate.

However, pao cai is classified as a food closer to 'pickles' in terms of preparation and form. Pao cai is made using salted water containing Sichuan pepper and baijiu (Chinese liquor), and it hardly produces lactic acid bacteria. The Chinese government also explicitly stated in documents submitted to ISO that "the food standards for pao cai do not apply to kimchi."

Nevertheless, China’s persistent creation of 'unfounded origin country controversies' surrounding kimchi appears to be an extension of the Northeast Project controversy from the early 2000s.

On October 10th, at Hoshang Fortress in Dandong, Liaoning Province, China, near the North Korea-China border. China claims that the Great Wall from the Ming Dynasty extended to this location and has developed it as a tourist attraction for promotion. [Image source = Yonhap News]

The Northeast Project is a national project named 'Northeast Borderland History and Current Situation Research Project' by the Chinese government. It is a project based on a territorialist perspective that claims all history that occurred within current Chinese territory belongs to Chinese history, attributing the origins of historical and cultural phenomena passed down since ancient times to China. Although it is commonly known as a project to reclassify Goguryeo history as Chinese history, it covers a wide range of fields including ancient Korean history, Korea-China relations, Manchurian regional history, China-Russia relations, Korean Peninsula issues, and other cultural areas. This project, aimed at integrating various ethnic minorities within China and strengthening effective control over the Northeast region, is now encroaching on Korean traditional culture.

In fact, it is hard to see the fact that Lizhi posted a video about kimchi as a coincidence. The Chinese Communist Party selected Lizhi as an 'outstanding young netizen' and a 'model for Chinese youth' in 2018. In September of the following year, the weekly news magazine People’s Daily awarded her the 'Lingnim Choice Award' and appointed her as an ambassador for the Communist Youth League’s rural youth economic empowerment program.

As the possibility grows that Chinese authorities influenced her video, concerns are being raised that "this is not just about kimchi." Recently, China has claimed not only kimchi but also hanbok, arirang, pansori, and ssam (lettuce wraps) as its own, sparking so-called 'cultural project' controversies beyond the 'kimchi project' and 'hanbok project.'

China’s unfounded claims are expected to become more blatant and rapid in the future, making urgent discussions for effective countermeasures necessary.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.