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| MINEE EATS' mukbang videos on YouTube this month featured the uploader eating warabi mochi, top, and kiri mochi. Screen capture from YouTube |
By Ko Dong-hwan
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| The MINEE EATS operator is introduced on YouTube as Kim Min-hee and is based in Georgia, in the U.S. Screen capture from YouTube |
The mukbang uploader of MINEE EATS posted the video on July 14, in which she ate warabi mochi, a jelly-like confection covered with sweet toasted soybean flour.
The video sparked online criticism that it ignored the Korea-wide anti-Japan movement that involves boycotts of Japanese products at supermarkets and major shopping centers.
The movement emerged after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe excluded South Korea from its "white list," restricting Japanese exports of semiconductor-building materials to South Korea, the world's chip-making industry leader.
Hours later, she removed the video. She said the move reflected "many Korean viewers who were disgusted by the video," adding that her eating the mochi "by no means had any notion of my political proclivity."
Two days before, she posted a video of herself eating malatang with kiri mochi, another Japanese confection similar to warabi mochi.
Before her latest mochi videos, she had attracted criticism for calling gimbap "Korean sushi." Gimbap, hand-rolled steamed rice and various ingredients in dried seaweed, has been one of Korea's most popular street foods. She also aroused controversy for calling Korean traditional glutinous rice cake "chapssaltteok" a mochi.
The uploader, according to the video platform, is Kim Min-hee, who is based in Marietta, Georgia, in the United States. She has over 1.3 million subscribers.
Kim calls herself a "food lover" and "ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) specialist" on YouTube, referring to the video content genre where food-eating sounds are exaggerated to provoke viewers' responses. MINEE EATS has been posting the mukbang content since 2017.
