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Comment by hkmurakami | Hacker News Reader

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hkmurakami·

I always felt that something's amiss when you name your Korea fund "500 Kimchi" and let that hit media headlines.

I mean wouldn't people in South Korea find this to be derogatory?

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Good question: would they?

If you named your Canadian fund “500 Maples”, nobody would have a problem.

“500 Poutines” just wouldn’t get taken seriously.

I think when you swap south korea for canada, which is pretty culturally identical to america, you lose all the history of racism against eastern people and countries. So I wouldn't blame them if they did, and I would kind of expect them to actually, and would consider alternate views exceptions or even misguided. Its not necessarilly bad but it looks pretty bad.

It works both ways though - there is plenty racism from many in the east against western people both black and white. As a (very!) white person I've experienced this first hand in several places in Asia.

I'm in Thailand and there's a fund here called 500 tuktuks. The local startup people I talked to didn't find it offensive.

Can’t seem to find a translation: what does kimchi mean in Korean?

Edit: never mind. Found it. Haha.

I thought it mean "love" for some reason... maybe I'm thinking of a different Korean word.

It’s a local dish/recipe...not very startup-py I’d say...

I believe it is fermented cabbage.

So more startuppy than it might first appear then

For anybody else curious, it's a fermented cabbage side dish, really delicious in my opinion :)

Hmm...either I haven't found it or...it means "Kimchi" but you didn't originally know what Kimchi was (seems unlikely..)

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