Unlicensed South Korean Workshop Pickled Cabbage Beside a Portable Toilet, Sending Over 50 Boxes a Day to Markets; Wastewater Flowed Into a Stream
South Korea's MBC reported on November 12 that, at the height of kimjang season, when households prepare salted cabbage for winter kimchi, an unlicensed salted-cabbage workshop was found operating without having reported its business to the local government: the workshop was set up in a vinyl greenhouse on the outskirts of a city, right beside an old-style portable toilet, and wastewater from the pickling process flowed untreated into a nearby stream; salted cabbage produced there reached markets at a rate of more than 50 boxes a day.
The report said hygiene at the site was extremely poor: workers wore no hats, masks or other basic protective gear, discarded vegetable leaves lay scattered on the floor, and a mud-caked rubber tub sat on top of a brine tank full of cabbage. The person in charge of the workshop said the products were supplied to a well-known supermarket through acquaintances. The report did not name the city where the workshop is located or the supermarket.
Under South Korea's current Food Sanitation Act, processing and selling food without reporting the business, and distributing food processed in unsanitary conditions, are both subject to strict penalties: violating the business-reporting requirement can draw up to three years in prison or a fine of up to 30 million won. The report noted that small, short-lived, itinerant illegal workshops of this kind easily escape regulators' nets, and how much unlicensed salted cabbage reached markets, and through which channels, still awaits a thorough investigation by the authorities.
(Source: MBC)
Source: MBC
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：盐渍白菜（资料图）。照片：Joseph Steinberg，CC BY-SA 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Salted napa cabbage (file photo). Photo by Joseph Steinberg, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
