Pulmuone Museum Kimchigan Hosts Free 'Online Children's Kimchi School'

The online "Children's Kimchi School" experience instructor is conducting a theoretical kimchi class to learn about the ingredients needed for making kimchi.

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Pulmuone’s ‘Museum Kimchigan’ will operate a non-face-to-face kimchi experience program, ‘Online Children’s Kimchi School,’ for free starting from the 8th of next month.

‘Online Children’s Kimchi School’ is a non-face-to-face kimchi experience program that converts Museum Kimchigan’s representative participatory education program, ‘Children’s Kimchi School,’ into an online format. Museum Kimchigan has newly organized the program so that children can enjoy making kimchi at home using a kimchi kit (1 kg of salted napa cabbage, 500 g of kimchi seasoning) and experience Korea’s kimjang culture.

Museum Kimchigan will recruit participants for ‘Online Children’s Kimchi School’ through the reservation system on the Museum Kimchigan website starting at 10 a.m. on the 30th. Once the application is completed on the website, educational materials including kimchi ingredients and activity sheets necessary for the class will be delivered to the applicant’s home before the class, and the class will be conducted in real-time with the teacher via video call.

‘Online Children’s Kimchi School’ consists of a kimchi theory class taught by a kimchi teacher and a kimchi-making experience. The kimchi theory class is a time to learn about the lactic acid bacteria contained in kimchi and the ingredients needed to make kimchi, tailored to the children’s level.

The kimchi-making experience is an education that uses the five senses, allowing children to touch, taste, and smell the ingredients of kimchi. It was planned to instill the perception that kimchi is a unique Korean food and a representative Korean dish before children develop prejudices that kimchi is a spicy food with a strong smell.

‘Online Children’s Kimchi School’ is open to any children aged 6 to 10 residing in Korea. Classes are held four times a week, every Thursday and Friday at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Parents with children aged 6 to 10 can apply. However, the program participation is limited to two children only, not a mother and child pair.

Museum Kimchigan plans to provide free kimchi experience opportunities to 6,000 people annually by operating both online and offline experiential education programs, including multicultural kimchi school and foreigner kimchi school programs, along with ‘Online Children’s Kimchi School’ this year.

Na Kyung-in, team leader of Museum Kimchigan, said, “We planned this non-face-to-face kimchi experience program to help children have a wise stay-at-home life and to support the formation of proper eating habits through taste education by making kimchi online.” She added, “We will continue to plan various programs so that children can become familiar with kimchi through fun play-based learning.”

Meanwhile, Pulmuone Museum Kimchigan is Korea’s first food museum, opened in 1986 in Pildong, Jung-gu. It was newly reopened as ‘Museum Kimchigan (間)’ in Insadong in April 2015. Through exhibitions combining the origin and types of kimchi, tools for making kimchi, and artifacts and digital content related to space, it has been promoting and preserving kimchi and kimjang culture both domestically and internationally.

Museum Kimchigan was the only Korean museum named among CNN’s ‘Top 11 Food Museums in the World’ in 2015 and was introduced as one of the ‘12 Best Food Museums in the World’ by the American global magazine Elle Decor in 2017. Currently, the museum is closed to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and the reopening date for offline operations will be announced on the Museum Kimchigan website.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.