Cover Image: A stylised dish combining brightly coloured, gummy‑like forms with rice, echoing the show’s playful collision of Korean cuisine, pop culture and surreal humour. Photo supplied.

Haribo Kimchi – by Jaha Koo / CAMPO
State Theatre Centre of WA, Perth Festival
Wednesday, 18th February

Haribo Kimchi is one man’s meditation on life that is so endearing you only realise afterwards what a complex and clever little masterpiece it is.

I was struck that the first subtle act of this gentle existential monologue is to slow down time, quite a feat when set in Korea, one of East Asia’s busiest nations.

An opening series of projected aerial images lead us toward a light-blazing metropolis, where we hover over its towers and glass walls before being led down to street level, then through the labyrinthine streets and alleyways of Seoul. Eventually we arrive at a pojangmacha, a late-night snack bar, where our host Jaha Koo slowly opens up his stall’s canvas sides and arranges his kitchen utensils with all the formal care of a Japanese tea ceremony master.

He invites a couple from the audience to join him and explains that he has four dishes he will prepare for them. But – as so often happens in the wee hours in a tiny bar – the host’s personal story unfolds while the kimchi pancake browns in the pan and he mixes the seaweed salad.

Our host explains that he was born in a rural village where his grandmother boasted the best cabbage-and-chilli kimchi pickles in the district. Korea’s emblematic dish marks his origins as surely as a birthmark; its pungent smell stirs the kind of melancholy felt by every traveller made to feel like an unwelcome alien abroad.   

Kimchi is also the source of wry comedy – he tells his guests that when he headed to Europe, his grandmother packed him a ten kilo bag that  fermented and exploded all over the verandah above an irate elderly Belgian couple. A lovely line is that kimchi follows him “like a family ghost.”

Haribo Kimchi is steeped in smell and sensation down the eventful decades of recent Korean history; our host’s father was confronted with the stench of murders during a military crackdown and thereafter could never abide the smell of fried chicken.  

But as a counterpoint, the show is infused with the playful, imaginative silliness of contemporary Korean culture – a hybrid mixture of K-pop electro beats, brilliant video animation (by a large multi-nation creative team) and the cult of Haribo gummy bear lollies. Where else but in Korea would our host’s narrative be shared by a talking snail called Gona and a robotic electric eel?

Meanwhile, the guests are on a culinary journey that sees them savour the delicate seaweed soup, the sizzling mushrooms and pan-fried kimchi. The rest of us lean in jealously to catch a whiff of genuine Korean cuisine.

Jaha Koo’s accent in English is strong, and large chunks of his narrative are in Korean, so we’re helped by subtitles situated above the tent flaps. Beneath them, the lucky couple are finishing their four courses, sipping soju-and-beer and bowing in thanks to their genial, gentle host.

Haribo Kimchi is showing with Perth Festival from 18–22 February.
For more information and tickets, visit: https://www.perthfestival.com.au/program/season-2026/haribo-kimchi