Designing “Korean” Kimchi: Speculative Configuration of Distance and Commodity Value in the Chinese Kimchi Industry

ABSTRACT In the Chinese kimchi industry, manufacturers employ product names, photographs, and logistical strategies to promote their kimchi's “Koreanness.” So, what makes their kimchi “Korean,” and how does its Koreanness formulate kimchi's commodity value? By analyzing how particular semiotic, aesthetic, and logistical strategies are utilized to foreground the Koreanness of Chinese‐made kimchi, I argue that kimchi's Korean qualities and images are intended to articulate the distance between Korea and China that consumers supposedly desire to overcome; in other words, Koreanness in this context serves as a token of distance rather than as a marker of place or nation. The ethnographic case demonstrates that commodity value is socially negotiated through producers' speculative engagements with consumers' imaginaries of distance. Consumers evaluate the commodity's quality, image, and identity at the time of purchase, which are grounded in their imaginaries of social relationships (who makes it for whom) and spatiotemporal orderings (where it is made). Producers seek to intervene and remold consumers' assessments by highlighting the distance that their products (with a specific quality and identity) can overcome for consumers. In these speculative interactions between producers and consumers, distance is configured as a spatial, temporal, or cultural gap between reality and desire, of which overcoming justifies additional market value. Attending to the speculative production of distance as a ground for value claims, this article illustrates how commodity value both reflects and reproduces social, cultural, and political hierarchies in and of the world.