Can a technical standard trigger a pitched battle? This one did it, not in a meeting room, but on millions of screens. Story of the first gastronomic war born, nourished and won with hashtags.
In November 2020, a major Chinese daily proudly announced a victory: an international standard, he wrote, has just established Chinese know-how in fermented vegetables. In Seoul, we read “kimchi” where Beijing wrote “pao cai”, and the Internet is on fire.
In a few hours, two nations are fighting over each other.
Welcome to the most modern battlefield there is:
the news feed.
A Chinese cabbage cut into quarters, massaged with a scarlet paste of chili pepper (gochugaru), garlic, ginger and fish brine, then left in an earthenware jar while the ferments work. kimchi is this tangy miracle: crunchy, spicy, a little funky, literally alive since the bacteria are still working there. In Korea, it accompanies almost every meal, and its great autumn preparation, kimjang, brings families and neighbors together around the same bowls. Difficult to do more everyday, more intimate, more identity.
The war of labels
It all starts from a simple misunderstanding. In 2020, China obtained ISO certification for pao cai, its Sichuan pickled vegetables. However, the text specifies in black and white that it does not apply to kimchi, which already has its own international standard. But the state press headlines on a global standard “led by China”, and many understand this as an annexation of the Korean national dish. Seoul’s response: In 2021, the government imposed xinqi (辛奇) as the official Chinese name for kimchi, to distinguish it once and for all from pao cai (泡菜). When two countries no longer even agree on the name of a dish, the battle is already half over.
When two countries no longer even agree on the name of a dish, the battle is already half over.
The battlefield is a screen
The rest is played on phones. A huge Chinese web star, Li Ziqi, publishes a video where she prepares kimchi presented as a Chinese dish: millions of views, and a shower of furious comments from Korea. Conversely, a Korean YouTuber loses her Chinese agency for defending Korean origin. Hashtags, response videos, memes: each side mobilizes its Internet users like troops, and the algorithm distributes the ammunition. It is no longer a quarrel between scholars, it is an open-air war of influence, where virality takes the place of artillery.
Two ferments, two memories
So who is right? Both, and neither. pao cai and kimchi are two distinct fermented vegetable traditions, cousins but separated by ingredients, chili, method. No one invented the idea of preserving cabbage in brine. UNESCO recognized this in its own way: in 2013 it inscribed the Korean kimjang, then in 2015 the North Korean tradition of kimchi, each time protecting a living know-how, never a property. There remains one detail that national pride prefers to keep quiet: a large part of the kimchi consumed in Korea is today imported from China. The symbol is Korean; the jar often comes from elsewhere.
Nationalism in the age of hashtags
Ultimately, this battle is not about cabbage. She talks about a country that has become a cultural superpower, from cinema to K-pop, and which defends its food like you defend a flag. She also speaks of a huge neighbor who refuses to have old know-how competed with him. Kimchi is the first major gastronomic conflict brought about by social networks, and certainly not the last: in the TikTok era, all it takes is a video to change a recipe into a casus belli. Fermentation continues its work in the jar, perfectly indifferent to notifications.
Iconographic credits: original images composed by artificial intelligence for “Gastronomic Conflicts”. These are visual interpretations, not documentary photographs.
