ISC students participate in Hansik Cooking Event
The ISC K-Cooking Event took place in collaboration with professional chef Kyung-hee Kim.
Program participants had a chance to experience the culinary culture of Korea by cooking bulgogi and mung bean sprouts.

On July 7, the Korea University International Summer Campus (ISC) held a cooking event for its students in order to give them the firsthand experience of making hansik (traditional Korean food) dishes and eating the dishes they made. The event, held at two venues, the Soodo Cooking Academy and K-Style Hub, was attended by approximately 120 students who were offered a chance to cook bulgogi and mung bean sprouts themselves.

At the beginning of the program, Chef Kyung-hee Kim from the Soodo Cooking Academy welcomed the program participants. “Thank you for coming here to learn to cook the Korean dishes despite the sultry weather. Through making bulgogi and mung bean sprouts together, I hope you create a great memory, and even after this program, learn many good things about Korea,” said the chef. As she demonstrated the recipe, she explained to students why she chose bulgogi and mung bean sprouts for the dishes of the day. “Two dishes we are going to make today symbolize the harmony of yin and yang. While bulgogi is a warm dish representing yang, mung bean sprouts is a cold dish symbolizing yin,” said Kim. Students listened to her attentively, nodding their heads.

After the chef’s cooking demonstration, students started to make their own dishes following the recipe. The completed dishes were tried together with lettuce wraps (ssam in Korean). Students, at first, looked a bit nervous when they were watching the cooking demonstration of dishes they were not familiar with. Once they were divided into groups of two and began cooking, however, they actively participated in the cooking process from chopping vegetables to preparing the meat. When they finally completed cooking and tried their dishes, they seemed to enjoy experiencing a new culinary culture, making lettuce wraps with bulgogi in and feeding their cooking partners. 

According to ISC, they had a variety of cultural experience programs on their agenda as many of ISC students showed a great interest in the Korean culture. “Among our programs, the cooking experience program is the most popular one. We have another cooking program scheduled next week in which students will make Korean street foods, such as gimbap,” said an official related to ISC.

Anna Sophia and Karen from Tecnológico de Monterrey (Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education) praised the cooking program as extraordinary. “It was our first time to make a Korean dish, but we had a great experience of cooking the dishes ourselves and eating them afterwards. We found it very extraordinary and fun to wrap bulgogi meat with lettuce after placing ssamjang and kimchi onto them,” said the students.

Seon-hee Han, one of KU students who voluntarily helped the ISC students as part of the Buddy Program, smiled as she recalled the cooking class. “Everyone was paying attention to the demonstration and cooking. After the class, they helped each other with washing the dishes and cleaning up the sink,” she said.

The KU ISC, which started off on June 27, has more cultural programs to come, along with intensive academic courses for the next five weeks.