KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 19 ― Hamzy, a popular South Korean mukbang host, is in the soup with followers from South Korea and China after she got sucked into a row between social media users of the two countries ― over kimchi.
The controversy had erupted on January 15 when Hamzy paired her bibimbap, a traditional Korean rice dish, with what she referred to as “white kimchi”, Chinese portal CGTN reported.
Labelling the fermented cabbage as kimchi, Hamzy was perceived by Chinese internet users as asserting that the pickled dish is South Korean instead of Chinese.
The food fight had begun in November when the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) issued regulations for the production of Chinese salted fermented vegetables or pao cai.
Pao cai in Mandarin also refers to kimchi, the culinary pride and joy of South Koreans.
Despite ISO specifically noting that “the document does not apply to kimchi,” confusion over the name soured the mood of South Korean online users, who accused China of “cultural theft” much to the discontent and protest of their Chinese counterparts.
To make matters worse, the South Korean vlogger was also called out for liking comments posted under her YouTube channel that insulted Chinese people.
This led to Chinese internet users calling for a boycott of Hamzy and her videos be removed from Chinese platforms.
She later issued an apology during a livestream on Weibo and said liking the offensive comment was unintentional.
This in turn angered her South Korean followers.
To calm things a little, Hamzy said her agency had asked her to apologise to the Chinese fans.
On bilibili, a Chinese video sharing platform similar to YouTube, Hamzy's followers dropped from 1.8 million to 1.4 million overnight as a result of the controversy.
The Chinese company that represents Hamzy in China had since announced they are discontinuing business with the vlogger.
“We believe that Hamzy had no intention of hurting her Chinese fans,” Shanghai Suxian Advertising Media Co, Ltd said in a statement.
“That is why we worked together with her to apologize to Chinese netizens.
However, without letting us know, Hamzy responded to comments that are unfriendly to Chinese netizens, which hurt Chinese netizens again,”
Hamzy has 5.3 million followers on YouTube, three million followers on Weibo, a Chinese Twitter-like platform, and over one million each at Little Red Book, a social shopping app and bilibili.
