Dongdaemun K-Medi Center offers 'medicinal cooking' classes
People participate in a DIY class at Seoul K-Medi Center. / Courtesy of Dongdaemun-gu Office
By Lee Suh-yoon
Seoul K-Medi Center, the new billion-dollar traditional Korean medicine complex located in Dongdaemun, northeastern Seoul, is offering “medicinal cooking” classes to residents.
Medicinal cooking arose as a healthy eating movement set on preventing illness. It steers away from processed foods and chemical seasoning while insisting on using natural, mostly plant-based ingredients ― sometimes enhanced by a touch of traditional Korean medicine. Ingredients range from ginger, pumpkin and black sesame seeds to more exotic ingredients with more questionable health effects according to modern medicine, such as cordyceps, a parasitic fungus that grows on insect larvae.
The classes will take place at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Tuesday classes will involve making sweet tea-mixing jams while Thursday and Sunday classes will focus on creating entire meals and desserts.
The center will also conduct special DIY for making facial masks or soap with traditional Korean medicine ingredients every Wednesday and weekends. Visit
to make reservations.
The K-Medi Center is located in Dongdaemun's Yangnyeong Market, filled with some 800 vendors selling everything from tree roots to dried maggots. It opened in October 2017 with the aim of promoting traditional Korean medicine tourism and was jointly funded by the central government, Seoul Metropolitan Government and Dongdaemun-gu Office.