Velvety and decadent, mango mousse may have seemed like a properly regal dish to serve at a historic summit that will bring the leaders of the two Koreas together to discuss weighty issues like nuclear weapons and formally ending the Korean War. If only it were that simple.
Velvety and decadent, mango mousse may have seemed like a properly regal dish to serve at a historic summit that will bring the leaders of the two Koreas together to discuss weighty issues like nuclear weapons and formally ending the Korean War.
If only it were that simple.
Japan, which is watching the Korean summit from afar, expressed alarm this week when publicity photos of the planned dessert showed the mousse would be topped with a map of the Korean peninsula and a pair of disputed islands.
« It is extremely regrettable, » a Japanese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said on Wednesday, adding that Japan had lodged a protest. « We have asked that the dessert not be served. »
From shrimp to mango mousse, food has long been a diplomatic weapon in the arena of the complex, fraught and sometimes petty geopolitics of East Asia.
When President Trump sat down for a state dinner with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in in November, on the menu was shrimp caught in the waters off an island at the center of a long-running territorial dispute between Seoul and Tokyo. The South Korean government made sure the world got to hear that the seafood originated from the island, known locally as Dokdo, but referred to in Japan as Takeshima.
Whether the not-so-subtle barb was merely an appeal to nationalist sentiment at home or was driven by resentment at Trump having stopped off in Japan before arriving South Korea on his five-nation Asia tour, only President Moon knows for sure. But Japan’s government duly took the bait and formally protested the menu in an almost inevitable act of political theater.
« We have to lodge our protests; it’s part of the ritual, » said Jun Okumura, a political analyst at the Meiji Institute for Global Affairs in Tokyo.
Fast forward to this week and all eyes in the region are on the historic summit to take place between North and South Korea on Friday, a gathering that will mark the first time a leader from the north has stepped foot in the south since the Korean War.
