"Koo is a jack-of-all-trades, appealing to all your senses. Haribo Kimchi is both a refined as well as a raw performance about life in a country that isn’t yours. Not only love but even melancholy are feelings that go through the stomach." - Floris Baeke, 2024, De Standaard
"A performance that inimitably mixes Korean cooking with personal stories and reflections on comfort food, identity and migration." - Pieter T’Jonck, 2024, pzazz
The surprising flavour of seaweed soup, the sharp sound of a knife slicing cucumber, the hiss and sizzle of mushrooms on a scorching fire. With Haribo Kimchi, we find ourselves in a pojangmacha, a typical late-night snack bar seen on the streets of South Korea. There, we meet three characters—a snail, a gummy bear, and an eel—who take us on a culinary journey, exploring food as a shelter for those estranged from their roots. In a series of intimate and absurd anecdotes, they recount the evolution of kimchi culture, the bitter pain of unadulterated racism, the shame of desperate attempts to blend in with the crowd, and the indescribable umami taste of home.
Following the success of his The History of Korean Western Theatre at the Baltoscandal festival in Rakvere (2022), which delved into the far-reaching imperialism in East Asia, South Korean theatre maker and composer Jaha Koo returns to Estonia. His patented hybrid style combines music, video, and robotic performers to craft a reflection on cultural assimilation with all its conflicts and paradoxes. In a gripping performance that plays with all the senses, he serves up personal stories marinated in sweet-and-sour melancholy.
Jaha Koo (1984) is a South Korean theatre/performance maker, music composer and videographer. Koo majored in Theatre Studies (BFA, 2011) at Korea National University of Arts and earned a master's degree (MA, 2016) at DAS Theatre in Amsterdam University of Arts.
His artistic practice oscillates between multimedia and performance, encompassing his own music, video, text, and robotic objects. He is recognized for the Hamartia Trilogy, which includes Lolling and Rolling (2015), Cuckoo (2017) and The History of Korean Western Theatre (2020). The trilogy represents a long-term exploration of the political landscape, colonial history and cultural identity of East Asia. Thematically, it focuses on structural issues in Korean society and how the inescapable past tragically affects our lives today.
He is currently developing Born to be K to be POP in collaboration with LOD muziektheater in Ghent, with a premiere scheduled for early summer 2027. It will be created together with visual artist and scenographer Eunkyung Jeong. His works where in the focus of this years Festival d’Avignon with performances of Lolling and Rolling and Cuckoo. Jaha Koo is the first recipient of Asian descent to win the prestigious International Ibsen Award in 2026, often referred to as the Nobel Prize of theatre, for ‘his innovative and deeply human theatre’. He is based in Ghent, Belgium, and is an associate artist of LOD muziektheater, Theater Utrecht, CAMPO, and Seoul Performing Arts Festival.