Wednesday 9 September 2009

PSA: Cancelling the Kimchi Festival is Not an Admission That Kimchi Doesn't ... You Know

It is my unfortunate duty to inform you that Gwangju's World Famous Hub of Mecca Kimchi Festival will be canceled this year.

However, there have been some murmurs and rumblings which I feel must be addressed: it must be emphatically stressed that the festival's cancellation was NOT because Kimchi lacks the power to cure SARS, swine flu, or any other ailment.


No, it was cancelled because we do not want to risk gathering too many foreigners in one place. As is well known, foreigners cannot resist the siren call of a Korean culture festival, and flock anywhere they see Korean press members with cameras, jumping into frames and insisting on being photographed to the point of harassment.

It is our wish to prevent these foreigners from congregating and turning the Kimchi festival into one big swine flu party, that causes us, with deep regret, to cancel the kimchi festival.


However, we would like to reassert Kimchi's healing properties, and ensure you all that there is no need to worry about trivialities like hand-washing, mouth-covering, or avoiding sharing shotglasses in the traditional Korean style: as we know, traditional actions are culturally immune from spreading diseases, as long as you eat lots of kimchi. With chopsticks, so you'll be smart. And especially women, so they'll be beautiful.

(pictures: brian, Korea beat
ht: brian: what would we do without you?)

3 comments:

DSW said...

Jesus, I was hoping to make it all the way to that not-in-the-least boring city to eat something that I don't already have thrust upon my three meals a day...

Brian said...

Thanks for the link.

Sources close to the festival and to kimchi tell me that it was cancelled not because kimchi doesn't work on the flu, but because kimchi doesn't work on foreigners with the flu. Like nunchi, kimchi is perfectly suited to Koreans, but its results cannot be accurately predicted when tried on foreigners. Rather than risk infecting the tens of . . . dozens of foreigners who would have been passing through and been like "what's this? sure, what the hell, the bus terminal's closed" . . . I mean, who had planned to intend, thereby severely damaging Korea's international brand image, they decided to simply cancel the festival.

Or, given the shitty way they've promoted this and other local festivals in English, they might have just rescheduled it for tomorrow, but it's not like any of us would ever find out.

Mightie Mike's Mom said...

I like your comment Brian!