South Korea is planning to send kimchi into space in a giant leap for its much-loved national dish, Yonhap news agency reported Monday.
A state-run food research body is pushing ahead with a plan to develop traditional foods like kimchi, the chili paste “gochujang” and ginseng so that they can be eaten in space, Yonhap said.
It said the Korea Food Research Institute was working on space food with the cooperation of a culinary institute in Kazakhstan that catered to Russian space crews.
The research is expected to allow the first South Korean astronaut to take traditional food into space, including the spicy side dish made of fermented vegetables which can linger pungently on the breath of its devotees.
The South Korean government plans to select the country’s first two astronaut candidates and put one of them into space by 2008 for experiments, with the help of Russia.
The state-supported South Korean food institute said only a handful of countries, including the United States, Russia and China, prepared traditional dishes for their astronauts.
It said if the development of the food was completed in time, foreign crews aboard the international space station would also be able to sample South Korean fare within two years. – AFP