PKGen Korea’s Epic Year
Published January 6th 2020
PKGen Korea was exceptionally busy in 2019 – and we mean busy! Director Jiho Kim has been hard at work this year, tirelessly promoting the art across multiple sectors, teaching workshops, running courses and giving numerous public talks and presentations to new communities.
Korea particularly focused on spreading parkour education to the Public & Alternative School system, with great success.
Partnering with a dedicated collaborator organisation in the Kurikindi Center in Seoul, the Parkour Playground became an incredibly popular destination for young and old alike. Almost every day this year the outdoor facility had groups of children utilising it after school. PKGen Korea’s Parkour For All Festival had 120 participant, which is the most participants ever in a single parkour workshop in South Korea.
Korea’s main social issue today is digital addiction, and a lack of movement in people’s general lifestyle; and PKGen Korea is achieving significant success in combatting this through parkour.
A brief sample of just some of the social inclusion events, workshops and programmes the Korea team has run this year includes:
- Gangwondo Education Institute ‘Embody movement & parkour workshop’ for public school teachers
- Chungnam Education Institute ‘Embody Movement & Parkour Workshop’ for public school teachers
- Kurikindi Center ‘Parkour MasterClass’
- Gwangju Parkour Workshop
- Gwandang elementary school teacher training
- Sindo elementary school students parkour workshop
- Play Seoul 2019 rooftop playground festival
- Run Like a girl, Tokyo Parkour workshop
- ‘Fail Expo Talk show’ by Ministry of Public Administration and Security
- 10000 Arts & 10000 Acts Parkour workshop
- 1st Parkour for ALL Festival
- 2nd Parkour for ALL Festival
- Rice Seed School parkour workshop
- Minerva School parkour workshop
- SheCanTrace ‘Women’s parkour workshop’
- Play Saturday Expo parkour playground
- Eunpyeong innovative education festival parkour playground
Add this to the usual fare of performance work, regular classes and international travel and events and you soon realise just how productive and effective Jiho and his team are!
We’d like to give sincere thanks to Jiho for his relentless dedication to being an incredible role model for parkour from the day he began as Korea’s first parkour practitioner right upto the present, some 15 years later.