Plastic pieces found in Pulmuone's kimchi packs

The same product is exported to the US market

Plastic pieces have been found in kimchi products made by Pulmuone, the largest kimchi exporter to the United States.

A 29-year-old office worker surnamed Kim said he purchased six packets of kimchi at a nearby supermarket and found plastic inside two of them. “I felt something sharp cutting my gum when I was eating Pulmuone's kimchi.

The cut wasn't deep and I just spat it out, thinking that it was an accident and I was just unlucky. But I found another piece in the next kimchi pack I opened,” Kim said.

“It wasn't thick but it wasn't small, about 1.5 centimeters-long in size. It had a sharp edge that could easily cut someone's gum. I wouldn't have reported it had I not found one piece per package,” Kim added.

Kim said the kimchi product he bought came in a plastic container with 400 grams of the traditional Korean side dish.

He says there is no way the plastic piece could have got into the sealed case during the distribution or consumption process.

Pulmuone stated that it was a rare occurrence and the company would need to see the plastic to determine what it is and how it got into the kimchi.

“We will have to call our factory and ask how plastic pieces came got in there. For now, we don't know what it looks like and if it went into our kimchi during the production process,” a Pulmuone official said.

Kim said the name of the product he bought was “Sliced Kimchi,” which Pulmuone has recently launched here for single and two-person households.

The 400-gram kimchi comes in a round plastic container, which is the same as that sold in the US since last year.

Currently, the Pulmuone Kimchi products sold in 3,900 Walmart stores and 1,100 Kroger outlets are all produced in Korea at the same facility that made the Kimchi product Kim purchased.

The only difference is Pulmuone's Kimchi in America is on sale under the brand Nasoya, the top US tofu manufacturer, which is owned by Pulmuone Foods USA.

Since last August, Pulmuone has successfully taken over 40.4 percent of the market share for ready-made kimchi in the U.S., according to Nielsen.

According to the manual released by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS), if a customer reports the presence of a foreign substance to a food maker, the company has to notify the complaint to the relevant government body within seven days.

A customer can report the case only if the substance found in the food product is longer than 3 millimeters.

In the event of a determination of fault on the part of the food maker, a local government body can take action via issuance of a correction order or directly suspending the manufacturing of the product for 10 days.

“A food maker has to explain how and why the foreign substance was found in the product and guarantee it will not happen again,” a MFDS official said.