ChaeChaepong Kimchipong

A thousand years before the story is set, wizardess Harin created the ChaeChaepong creatures to battle Aegross, who wanted to destroy the environment. A thousand years later, Tochi, a young boy, escaped Aegross' powers which literally petrified his village. In order to destroy Aegross' rule, he has to collect ChaeChaepongs around the world, recovering the health of the places he goes to. Each of the ChaeChaepongs is based on ingredients used to make kimchi, as well as featuring other core elements of Korean traditional culture, such as onggi and the taegeuk patterns, in its backgrounds. Each ChaeChaepong has an element (water, wind, earth, fire, light); when the five are combined, these form Harin's sword, which defeats Aegross ==Production and broadcast==

The series started airing on KBS2 on August 9, 2002, and aimed at increasing the consumption of kimchi among Korean children, as well as promoting a healthy lifestyle. The production team believed that kimchi consumption would increase the same was as the Popeye cartoons did with spinach decades before. The series was the result of a collaborative effort between Juju Bank, a minor animation studio (being its first work), and the Korean Broadcasting System. The idea came from a September 2000 dinner involving company founder Kim Young-jun, where someone compared the preparation of kimchi to wine from fermented grapes and cheese from fermented milk. Moreover, vegetarianism was on the rise in South Korea, and, coupled with the then-impending arrival of the 2002 FIFA World Cup (which South Korea co-hosted with Japan), came the idea of an animated series featuring uniquely Korean cultural elements to attract children in Korea and abroad. After working for forty days, KBS approved the concept and began co-production talks with foreign broadcasters; the first of which being NHK, Fuji TV and TV Asahi. The English dub of the series was put up for syndication in the United States; the distributor was Promark Television. ==References==