A street vendor at a local festival in Busan has sparked controversy after being caught boiling plastic-wrapped sundae (Korean blood sausage) in fish cake broth without removing the packaging.
According to Busan's Yeonje District office on Sunday, images of a vendor placing vinyl-packaged sundae into a pot of eomuk-tang (fish cake soup) and heating it at the Yeonje Gobun Fantasy Festival went viral on social media after being posted on Friday.
The vendor was also found to have placed unwrapped sundae — still in its plastic packaging — inside a steamer. Concerned netizens warned that the heating process could cause endocrine disruptors and microplastics to leach into the food. The festival, held from Thursday to Saturday at Oncheon Citizens Park and the surrounding ancient tomb area, drew larger-than-usual crowds as cherry blossoms were in full bloom.
The Yeonje District office expelled the vendor from the festival grounds on the same day the photos surfaced online. The final day of the festival on Saturday proceeded without the vendor. The vendor had participated through an outsourced agency selected via an open bidding process commissioned by the district to operate an "external food market" section.
"A food poisoning monitoring team was active during the festival, but the large crowds made it difficult to catch the violation in time," a district official said. "We plan to impose administrative penalties for the unhygienic cooking practices."
This is not the first time festival food hygiene has come under fire. In February, a vendor at the Taebaeksan Snow Festival in Gangwon Province was caught defrosting bottles of makgeolli (Korean rice wine) by submerging them in fish cake broth, footage of which spread rapidly on social media. The vendor's operations were immediately shut down and the stall was dismantled on the spot.
On Jeju Island, a stir-fried sundae dish containing just six pieces sold for 25,000 won ($18) at the Jeonnong-ro King Cherry Blossom Festival in March last year, sparking accusations of price gouging. The festival was subsequently dropped from Jeju Province's designated festival evaluation this year, resulting in its budget subsidy rate being cut from 100 percent to 70 percent.
In response, the Jeju provincial government introduced a policy to immediately remove festivals from its designated list and bar them from reselection for three years if they damage Jeju's image through social controversies such as price gouging.
As gaps in food safety management at local festivals continue to surface, calls are growing for a structural review of the vendor selection process through outsourced agencies and on-site hygiene monitoring systems.