  The HERMES collaboration recently reported a reevaluation of the
strange-quark parton distribution, $S(x)$, based on kaon production in
semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering. Two distinct results on $S(x)$ at the
$x> 0.1$ region, one with a sizable magnitude and another with a vanishing
content, were reported. We show that the latter result is due to a particular
assumption adopted in the analysis. The impact of the new HERMES $S(x)$ result
on the extraction of intrinsic light-quark sea in the proton is discussed.
Given the large uncertainty in the kaon fragmentation function, we find that
the latest HERMES data do not exclude the existence of a significant intrinsic
strange-quark sea in the proton. The $x$ dependence of the $(s+\bar s)/(\bar u+
\bar d)$ ratio is also in qualitative agreement with the presence of intrinsic
strange-quark sea.
