SEOUL — Koreans say they must eat kimchi wherever they are. When South Korea dispatched troops to the Vietnam War in the 1960s, tearful mothers sent off their sons with clay pots containing homemade kimchi. Soon troopships were filled with the pungent smell of the fermenting cabbage slathered with pepper and garlic.

So it was only natural for Koreans to think that their first astronaut must have the beloved national dish when he goes on his historic space mission in April. Three top government research institutes went to work. Their mission: to create "space kimchi."

"If a Korean goes to space, kimchi must go there, too," said Kim Sung Soo, a Korea Food Research Institute scientist. "Without kimchi, Koreans feel flabby. Kimchi first came to our mind when we began discussing what Korean food should go into space."

Ko San, a 30-year-old computer science engineer who beat 36,000 contestants to become the first South Korean space traveler, will blast off April 8 on board a Russian-made Soyuz rocket, together with two Russian cosmonauts. He will stay in the International Space Station for 10 days conducting scientific experiments.