Stinky Korean Dish Seeks Smell Of Success and a Global Market
By Jay Solomon
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
August 17, 2001

SEOUL, South Korea -- Early one morning last October, microbiologist Kim Sun Young offered new strains of Korea's fiery national dish to a carefully selected set of guinea pigs: the Seoul chapter of the American Women's Club.

Mr. Kim, hidden behind a one-way mirror at the headquarters of South Korea's giant conglomerate Doosan Corp., studied the half-dozen housewives as they nibbled different samples of pungent, blood-red kimchi cabbages. Valerie Briggs of Chicago said she thought her kimchi was too bland. Sunita Saxena of Toronto liked the crunchiness of hers. But Leigh Rubino's reaction confirmed a need for further experimentation.

She spat out the kimchi and complained of a headache. The smell "shot right up through my nose and hit my brain like an arrow," the 31-year-old from Lombard, Ill., says, remembering how her eyes teared from the spiciness.

Such is the challenge facing Mr. Kim and a small society of self-styled "kimchi doctors," food scientists who are competing to turn their country's stinky national dish into a global one.

Schooled in biology and steeped in national pride, these men and women see the makings of both their own fortunes and a better world in their kimchi -- cabbage or other vegetables bathed and fermented in chili, garlic and ginger. But will foreigners truly embrace a dish that's become synonymous even here with bad breath?

Mr. Kim, 38, thinks so, predicting kimchi will be "the next sushi or salsa." He claims a litany of health benefits: Kimchi helps prevent cancer and high cholesterol, promotes healthier skin and cleanses the lower intestine. These claims make the national dish a potential goodwill ambassador for a country that feels it doesn't get its due share of affection.

"Koreans are very much like kimchi -- hot tempered," says Mr. Kim. "On the outside, both kimchi and Koreans might seem rude, but once you get to know them, they become long-lasting friends."

Mr. Kim's kimchi crusade started a year ago. The boyish-looking microbiologist says he was content living the scholarly life at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he was studying the fermentation process of cheddar cheese, the subject of his Ph.D. research.

Then he received a phone call of national importance: Doosan, South Korea's largest kimchi producer and a former employer of Mr. Kim's, needed him to concoct a kimchi both palatable to Americans and capable of fending off kimchis being exported by Korea's neighbor and archrival, Japan.

Doosan, whose assets include an advertising firm, breweries and power plants, had been watching in dismay in recent years as Japanese companies flooded the world market with their own brands of kimchi -- which Koreans consider too bland. By some estimates, 70% of the kimchi sold outside of Korea comes from Japan. The thought of Japanese dominance of the kimchi trade was too much to stomach for most Koreans, who trace their kimchi consumption back 1,000 years and who suffered under Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945.

This year, Doosan and another South Korean food giant, Cheil Jedang Corp., have intensified their efforts to conquer the U.S. market, forming distribution alliances in the western U.S. -- Doosan with Costco Wholesale Corp. and Cheil Jedang with Ralphs Grocery Co., which already has placed kimchi in almost half its 350 stores.

And after a six-year struggle, the Korean kimchi crusaders scored a diplomatic coup last month: The Codex Alimentarius, which sets international food standards accepted by the World Trade Organization, adopted a global standard for making kimchi cabbage that matches Korea's methods. Korean producers hope the victory will undercut Japan's kimchi products, which they say lack the proper pungency because the spices are too weak and the fermentation too spotty.

"We welcome ... with great pride the opportunity to become the world's sole kimchi power," says Lim Jong Gil, an official at the Korean Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. He says South Korea could generate kimchi exports greater than the $79 million registered in 2000.

Japanese kimchi producers say the new standard applies only to cabbage and gives countries flexibility to make changes. "I think the ruling will work positively" for Japan, said Toshio Ogawa of the Japan Pickle Producers Association.

To prepare for the global kimchi wars, Mr. Kim rushed home after Doosan's call and set up shop in a secluded laboratory on rolling hills outside Seoul. Mr. Kim says he had already learned in Wisconsin what Westerners thought of kimchi's potent bouquet: His seven-year-old daughter, Grace, wouldn't bring her beloved cabbages to school, for fear of offending her tender-nosed American classmates.

Armed with a staff of 10 and millions of dollars in funding from Doosan, Mr. Kim toiled in the lab for six months -- breaking only for church on Sunday, he says. His chemists analyzed the organic makeup of cabbages through microscopes. He fermented radishes and cucumbers in low-temperature refrigerators to suppress the odor. His creations were quickly tested on non-Korean tasters, such as the women at the American Women's Club and focus groups in the U.S. "I dreamed about cabbages for six months," Mr. Kim says.

Then, this spring, a breakthrough: Mr. Kim concocted a kimchi that he says has a shelf life of a year and an aroma that even Betty Crocker would love. But he is facing stiff challenges for global dominance even from within Korea, primarily from the grande dame of his country's kimchi industry, Kim Man Jo.

At 74, Mrs. Kim (who isn't related to Mr. Kim) traces her kimchi days back to the Korean War. As a university science student, she helped devise a canning process that allowed South Korean troops to take their pickled vegetables to the front. She later earned a Ph.D. in food microbiology for her kimchi-related work from the University of Leeds in the U.K. and helped prepare packaged kimchi for South Korean soldiers battling alongside the Americans in the Vietnam War.

Mrs. Kim's greatest advantage may be her prior experience selling kimchi to Americans. In the late 1980s, she teamed with a Bronx-based kosher-foods company to sell her pickles in New York under the brand "Dr. Kim's Original Kimchi." Making a kosher kimchi was no cinch, Mrs. Kim chuckles ruefully; the rabbinical inspections helped doom the effort. "The overhead was too high," she says.

Now she is teaming up with Cheil Jedang. In the past year, Mrs. Kim and her team have created a kimchi salsa and a kimchi salad for the U.S. market. For the Europeans, they have ginned up kimchi-kraut and kimchi relish. For Korean devotees of American junk food, Cheil Jedang has joined with the Korean operation of McDonald's to make a kimchi-topped burger.

A successful launch of these products in the U.S., Mrs. Kim says over a cup of tea, will "fulfill my kimchi destiny."

Still other entrepeneurs are working on their own kimchi innovations. The brother-sister team of Choi Keum Ja and Choi Byung Ju, owners of Super Food Bank Co., say they have created a "magic water" that renders kimchi virtually odorless. The tonic's recipe, which is derived from the seed of fruit, is so secret that Mr. Choi says he has to keep it hidden in a Tokyo lab. Meanwhile, Professor Han Hong Ui of Inha University says he has perfected a kimchi drink. And Pizza Hut began selling his kimchi-topped pizzas at its restaurants in Korea last year. A company spokeswoman says the product immediately generated 30% of total sales.

But Mrs. Rubino, the American Women's Club member and taste-tester, isn't likely to become one of those customers. She now says she has grown used to the taste of kimchi, but on one point she remains steadfast. When Mr. Kim asked her if it would be a good idea to make kimchi pizza, she told him: "Don't mess with pizza. That is sacrilegious."

-- Meeyoung Song in Seoul and Caroline An in New York contributed to this article