Kimchi wars: South Korean academic takes spat with China to new level with tart ad in New York Times

Sungshin University professor says he ran advert to let ‘world know clearly that kimchi belongs to Koreans’

The shot across the bow of China was the latest in a simmering dispute between the two countries over which one can rightfully claim the pungent delight

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South Korean social media influencer Hamzy eating kimchi in a YouTube video. Chinese social media sites have banned Hamzy after she gave a thumbs-up emoji to a comment critical of China for claiming to be the origin of the dish. Photo: YouTube/Hamzy

Published: 9:00pm, 20 Jan 2021Updated: 10:03pm, 20 Jan 2021

A renowned South Korean academic activist has taken the simmering row with China over which country invented kimchi to a new level – by placing an advertisement in The New York Times promoting it as a purely Korean culinary offering.

Seo Kyoung-duk, a professor at Sungshin University in Seoul who specialises in publicity, said he launched the campaign announcing Kimchi as an “iconic food of Korea and its culture”, as acknowledged by Unesco, “in order to let all the peoples in the world know clearly that kimchi belongs to Koreans, pure and simple”.

The advert ran in the Times’ US and international editions on Monday.

Seo Kyoung-duk’s kimchi advertisement in The New York Times. Photo: Twitter

Seo said he felt compelled to place the ad in response to China taking credit for being the origin of the fermented vegetable dish, whose popularity is gaining worldwide.

“Chinese online influencers, state-controlled news media, government officials and even its ambassador to the UN are going all-out in their efforts to commandeer kimchi as something Chinese,” he told This Week in Asia.

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