Where familiar food meets unfamiliar perspectives—a sensorial stage where identity simmers and memory sizzles

<Haribo Kimchi> unravels the complex memories and identities woven into Korean food through recognisable absurdism and touching stories—the diaspora of kimchi culture, cannibalism during the great famine, the scars left by racism, and the umami taste of home and longing. The work uses food as an everyday medium to illuminate cultural assimilation and the resulting conflicts, as well as the paradoxes within them, sharply reflecting on how food culture intersects with political and historical layers.

In Jaha Koo’s signature hybrid style combining music, video, and robotic performers, the performance engages all five senses of the audience and offers a completely new perspective on the everyday act of eating. On the stage where tradition and the present, humor and sorrow, nostalgia and embarrassment intersect—<Haribo Kimchi> quietly but powerfully poses questions about cultural truths we’ve forgotten.

Theatre director and composer Jaha Koo returns with his new work <Haribo Kimchi> following his <Hamartia Trilogy>. While his previous trilogy traversed past and present to examine the expansion of East Asian imperialism and the unexpected impact it had on a personal level, this new piece invites the audience into a ‘pojangmacha’, a food stall one might easily stumble upon on the night streets of Korea.

Here, in this space rich with sensory stimuli—the smell of steamy broth, the crisp rhythm of a knife slicing onions, the sizzling sounds and aromas of mushrooms cooking on a griddle—the audience encounters peculiar lost souls: a YouTuber, a nostalgic eel and his best friend, a toad, a stubborn electric rice cooker, and a Haribo gummy bear. These characters take the audience on a culinary journey, exploring food culture as a form of language that reveals the complex structure of a society.