If you are Korean, or are a fan of Korean foods, you must know BiBimBap - one of the best, if not the best dish in Korea. If you don't know what it is, I'll explain it to you guys quick and brief. BiBimBap is a dish mixed with various vegetables and beef to go along with the rice. But the most important ingredient is the red pepper paste, known as GoChuJang in Korea. Now how would a BiBimBap stir up a controversy with Infinity Challenge? Recently, Korea's Japanese bureau chief Kuroda Katsuhiro (????·68) made offensive comments towards BiBimBap, in Japan's Sankei News. On December 26th's column in Sankei's newspaper, he described BiBimBap as an, "unknown dish which loses all the different beautiful colors and looks gnawed when you are mixing the rice with vegetables" as well as commenting that, "he is worried about the Americans who might become surprised of that dish which tastes different than how it looks, after deciding to eat BiBimBap because of the advertisement pictures." He also added that, "in Korea, they are trying to globalize the Korean foods by using their campaigns which promotes selling BiBimBap throughout the world by canvassing everywhere. Recently, they have been advertising BiBimBap through advertisement in American newspapers." The last comment which said "through advertisement in American newspapers" were made towards MBC's Infinity Challenge team, when they were promoting BiBimBap in New York Times with professor Seo Kyung Duk, on December 21st. After reading the comments, the netizens, as well as Kim Tae Ho PD and professor Seo Kyung Duk became very furious. Regarding the comments made by Kuroda Katsuura, professor Seo Kyung Duk commented:
He tried to rationalize his own opinion and wrote in the newspaper column as if it were the opinions of many people. It was a very foolish action. ... A representative of New York Times said that our recent BiBimBap advertisement left a huge impression to the New Yorkers, to the point where some customers actually brought the newspaper which had the advertisement to the restaurant to order BiBimBap.Kim Tae Ho PD added:
Someone who is in a very high position, in a big media, reacted very ignorantly. ... The media press who published the column itself has a problem as well.Kuroda Katsuura in the past stirred up other controversies such as that "Dokdo (island) is a symbol of patriotism" and that he "choose the rich women because he was poor" through the same media, Sankei News. It sure was a foolish action to comment offensively towards Korea's popular dish BiBimBap, don't you guys think?
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