Food mogul ceases TV appearances after disputes
Paik Jong-won, a businessperson and TV celebrity considered one of the most influential figures in the local food industry, on Tuesday issued a public apology and announced that he is discontinuing his TV appearance following a string of controversies.
The news comes as Seoul Gangnam Police Station revealed that he is under investigation for allegations that the food and beverage company TheBorn Korea posted the imported ingredients used for its porridge as domestically sources when they were not. Paik is TheBorn Korea's founder and largest shareholder.
The company is already under probe for other suspicions such as misleading consumers over the origin of ingredients in other products.
"I will stop making appearances on all (TV) programs except for the one I'm filming right now... I will focus all my efforts and strength on TheBorn Korea, as an entrepreneur, not a TV personality," Paik said a video message posted on his official YouTube channel.
TheBorn Koream, which operates multiple restaurant and cafe franchises, is accused of breaking several laws particularly related to food and livestock sanitation. The latter involves an allegation that the company broke the law by not refrigerating the meat used at a local festival.
Paik, 58, said he is to be held accountable for all the accusations related to quality and hygiene issues of the company's products, and plans to launch an additional large-scale subsidy program for the store owners sometime next week.
Last week, Paik pledged 5 billion won ($3.59 million) to help franchise owners hit by the recent controversy, including exempting them from royalty fees for three months.
He indirectly addressed the recent suspicion that he abused his influence while appearing in MBC's "My Little Television," allegedly making unreasonable demands such as requesting certain personnel to be a part of the show.
Paik did not specify whether or not him stepping away from the media includes the second season of the popular Netflix show "Culinary Class Wars," which is slated to hit the streamer during the second half of his year and reportedly started shooting in late March.
Despite never having actually worked as a chef at a restaurant, Paik had earned a reputation for being an approachable and humble celebrity chef by providing solutions for struggling small eateries and sharing easy-to-follow recipes to viewers in his TV programs. But a series of alleged irregularities involving TheBorn Korea's operations have hit his image as a likeable celebrity hard.
Last month, it was reported that an official of Paik's company summoned a female candidate for a job to a bar, during which, said official asked personal questions and engaged in inappropriate physical contact with her. The case is under investigation by the Ministry of Employment and Labor
In March, police launched an investigation into a claim that the company had reported a makeshift structure in South Chungcheong as a farming greenhouse, but actually used it as a storage unit. In the same month, police started looking into another claim that Yesan High School -- of which Paik is the board chair -- violated the law related to the operation of its cafeteria.
In 2023, Paik was accused of using a pesticide sprayer to put sauce on the barbecue at a local food festival in Hongseong-gun, South Chungcheong Province, although the company maintained that it had abided by the Food Sanitation Act. The county authorities ultimately decided not to punish the act, saying no harmful substances were found in their inspection.
Nonillegal allegations include the low pork content in Paik Ham -- despite being more expensive than the market price of other ham products of the same size -- and his tangerine beer being found to have much-lower tangerine content than other similar products of the market.
The severe public backlash over Paik has been largely related to the fact that he had frequently stressed the importance of using home-grown food ingredients in his promotional videos or TV appearances, when it was revealed that his company used imported goods in at least some of the products. For instance, it was recently unearthed that the company's meal kits use chicken imported from Brazil, although he nor the company never actually claimed that the product used domestically sourced ingredients.
But Paik did say that he wanted to help the local agricultural and livestock industry sell their products in the promotional video for the meal kits uploaded on YouTube, leading many consumers to feel Paik skirted the law and misled them.
Despite the series of police and government investigations surrounding the operations of TheBorn Korea and Paik's activities, neither he nor the company has been convicted of any crime as of yet. But the suspicions surrounding the man who had frequently stressed the importance of quality and local ingredients in the food industry have resulted in him falling off of his pedestal, at least in the eyes of the public.
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