ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Microbes in Cold War Kimchi: From Nutritional Assets to Sterilized Hazards

• In Event: Cold War Science in Asia

English Abstract

This study examines how kimchi, one of Korea’s most symbolically charged fermented foods, and its microbes emerged and were studied as important objects of scientific inquiry during the Cold War. After the 1956 nutritional survey of the South Korean military conducted by the U.S.-led Interdepartmental Committee on Nutrition for National Defense (ICNND), the Scientific Research Institute (SRI) under the Ministry of National Defense initiated systematic research on kimchi to address vitamin deficiencies among soldiers. Fermentation scientists investigated microbial dynamics, identified vitamin-producing strains, and analyzed fermentation characteristics, thereby strengthening scientific interest in kimchi and its microbes. However, the dissolution of the SRI in 1961 abruptly halted this work.
Korea’s dispatch of troops to the Vietnam War in 1964 fundamentally redirected kimchi research. The need to provide canned kimchi for military rations required reconfiguring kimchi from an object of nutritional enhancement to one requiring complete sterilization. In this shift in microbial biopolitics, microbes were transformed from resources to be utilized into contaminants to be eliminated. In 1967, canned kimchi passed testing at the U.S. Army Natick Laboratory, enabling Korea to earn foreign currency through ration supply. Yet canned kimchi failed to take hold in the domestic market, shifting later kimchi research toward standardization and packaging technology rather than microbial ecology.
This study reveals how Cold War nutrition policy, military procurement systems, and institutional changes shaped discontinuities and reconfigurations in kimchi research. It highlights the transnational context of a traditional food and examines how microbial knowledge formation developed in modern Korea.

Author

• Seul-gi Lee, Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST)