SEOUL - SOUTH Korea has declared a rising volume of Chinese imported kimchi, or spicy fermented cabbage, to be inedible due to banned or harmful additives found in it, officials said on Sunday.

The Korea Food and Drug Administration told parliament it blocked 1,637 tonnes of Chinese-made kimchi due to food safety concerns last year, up from 282 tonnes in 2006 and 279 tonnes in 2005.

The kimchi shipments were found to have 'inedible' additives such as cancer-causing artificial sweeteners or banned colourings, the food and drug agency said.

Kimchi, a traditional Korean dish, has been increasingly made from cheaper Chinese cabbage.

The famed dish sparked a trade dispute with China in 2005, after South Korean inspectors said kimchi from China was contaminated with parasite eggs.

The new report came amid a South Korean ban on all products containing Chinese powdered milk for fear of melamine contamination.

Milk products tainted by the toxic industrial chemical usually used for plastics have sickened some 53,000 children in China and killed four of them.

The South Korean agency, which has been inspecting 428 Chinese-processed food products already on sale here, on Saturday told multinationals Mars and Nestle to pull three of their products from the local shelves.

The agency said it detected melamine in the snacks made in China by the multinationals, bringing to 10 the total number of goods recalled here since the melamine-tainted food scandal broke last month. -- AFP