EIF Review: Haribo Kimchi

Food is everywhere in Jaha Koo’s Haribo Kimchi. It is introduced, cooked, smelled, and tasted, becoming the thread that holds the performance together and carries stories of home, memory, racism, and the strange feeling of living somewhere in between.

Koo, a South Korean theatre-maker now based in Europe, transforms the stage into a small pojangmacha, a late-night Korean street-food stall. At the beginning of the show, he invites two audience members to sit at the counter, where they remain part of the stage scene throughout, eating as Koo cooks and shares his recollections. Yet the rest of us are never entirely outside this intimacy. The smell of food drifts through the room, while video, music, and live cooking turn the theatre into a multisensory space.

Sharing the stage with Koo are three non-human performers: Gona the snail, a Haribo gummy bear, and an eel. Gona begins with the tale of a snail Koo found in a lettuce and briefly kept as a pet before being released. Haribo stems from a taste he picked up while living abroad. At the same time, the eel emerges from a return trip to Korea and a surreal visit to an eel farm, eventually appearing as a robotic creature moving across the stage. Each seems to hold a small piece of Koo himself.

Then, unexpectedly, they sing. Across the different vignettes, the characters take turns appearing on screens with the exaggerated charm of retro electronic pop videos. These episodes bring a wonderfully odd sense of humour to the performance. Their animated strangeness gives Koo a playful way into themes that are far less light-hearted.

Multisensory Storytelling: Food, Memory, and Cultural Identity in Haribo Kimchi

These recollections unfold alongside somaek, kimchi pancakes, seaweed soup, fried mushrooms, and jelly, each opening onto memories of family, homesickness, and encounters abroad. Food is never only talked about. We watch it being prepared and smell it cooking from our seats. After an hour of being teased by the food stall, we in the audience are finally invited onto the stage after the performance to taste some for ourselves—a satisfying ending for an increasingly hungry room.

“These episodes bring a wonderfully odd sense of humour to the performance. Their animated strangeness gives Koo a playful way into themes that are far less light-hearted.“

Behind the humour sits Koo’s own experience of leaving Korea and building a life elsewhere. Years away have changed his relationship with home, while in Europe his Korean identity continues to make him visibly different. During the post-show conversation, he described this unsettled state through his own idea of “jelliness”, something that changes shape under pressure without completely losing itself. It is a playful but fitting way to think about an identity that continually adapts while retaining its core.

Koo also connects his state of mind before leaving Korea to two images already embedded in the performance: one of Gona the snail struggling for air, and another of fermenting kimchi swelling inside a sealed bag. Both need oxygen. When another artist in the audience asked whether, after all these years of leaving, moving, and searching, he felt he had finally found somewhere he could breathe, Koo paused for a few seconds.

“I think so.”

That pause stayed with me. It held both uncertainty and a quiet confidence, something that already seems embedded in Haribo Kimchi itself.