Never mind the ‘kimchi wars’: many South Korean restaurants still use Chinese imports, survey shows
- The poll was conducted in April, after a viral video of a shabby-looking cabbage-processing plant in China sparked food-safety concerns
- More than 43 per cent of respondents say they still served the imported kimchi, with most of those saying they had no plans to stop using it
The poll of 1,000 eateries was conducted by the Korea Food Industry Research Institute in April after video footage of the shabby-looking plant in China went viral in South Korea.
In the clips, a shirtless man can be seen wading through a pool of sludge-coloured liquid filled with cabbages as he transfers them into 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 liquid.
Of the restaurants surveyed, 43.1 per cent said that despite the controversy, they still used kimchi imported from China – only four percentage points lower than before what is known locally as the “half-naked Chinese kimchi maker scandal”.