Paik Jong-won, CEO of Theborn Korea, promotes the company's chicken steak meal kit in a video uploaded to his YouTube channel "Paik Jong-won" on July 18 last year. Captured from his YouTube channel

Paik Jong-won, CEO of food and beverage company Theborn Korea and a judge on Netflix's cooking competition show "Culinary Class Wars," is facing criticism again, following controversy over the pricing of his Paik Ham gift set. This time, the issue involves the use of imported chicken in one of his company's meal kits, despite previous comments about supporting local farmers.

The controversy stems from a video uploaded on July 18 of last year on Paik's YouTube channel. In the video, titled "Are we selling products grown on our land?," which included paid promotions, Paik showcased a new chicken steak meal kit from Theborn Korea's ready-to-eat brand "Paik Cook."

Paik said, "Our main goal is to help sell agricultural and livestock products that are hard to sell or overproduced," adding, "For example, we can sell processed sea eel products, promote eel dishes so that other restaurants can use them and sell eel meal kits ourselves to directly help eel farmers."

He then introduced the chicken steak meal kit, which was released the same day. However, contrary to the impression given by his comments, the chicken used in the meal kit was not locally sourced.

According to product details on Theborn Korea's online shopping site "Theborn Mall," the chicken used in the kit is labeled as "brined chicken thigh meat (Brazilian) 97.8 percent."

Although Paik did not explicitly state that the chicken was domestic, some viewers said that his mention of supporting local farmers before introducing the kit could lead consumers to assume the chicken was sourced from Korea.

Viewers voiced their disappointment in the video's comments, saying, "He said the goal was to promote local agricultural products, but using imported chicken doesn't make sense," "So the goal was to support Brazilian farmers?" and "This feels like a bait-and-switch tactic."

This controversy follows backlash last month regarding the pricing of the Paik Ham gift set, sold ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday. Priced at 51,900 won ($40), the set was sold at a 45 percent discount for 28,500 won during the holiday period.

However, some consumers compared it to CJ CheilJedang's "Spam," which is priced between 18,500 and 24,000 won, and questioned why "Paik Ham," with a lower pork content (85.4 percent compared to Spam's 91.3 percent), was more expensive.

In response, Theborn Korea explained that while Spam uses a mix of pork from Korea, the U.S., Spain and Canada, Paik Ham is made with 100 percent domestic pork.

Despite this explanation, critics accused the company of inflating the set's original price to make the discounted price seem more attractive, labeling it a deceptive pricing tactic. As the controversy grew, Theborn Korea recently removed the gift set from its product listings on "Theborn Mall."

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.