Children pose in front of a slot car racetrack at Hyundai Steel's 'Eco-Friendly Steelworks' experience center at KidZania Seoul in Yeongdeungpo District, Seoul, Sept. 14. Courtesy of Hyundai Steel

By Kim Jae-heun

Hyundai Steel has opened its Eco-Friendly Steelworks experience center at KidZania Seoul in Yeongdeungpo District to inform children of the environmental qualities of steel and the meaning of resource circulation, the company said Thursday.

KidZania is a global job experience theme park for youngsters and it operates Korea branches in Seoul and Busan.

The company signed a business partnership with KidZania in 2019 and has been operating a steel research institute for children to experience the development and testing of new materials such as earthquake-resistant steel product.

Visitors can also experience making a car body with clay in place of steel and apply it to a mini-car to test its driving performance. After that, they remove the clay and put it into a model electric furnace to observe the recycling process. In addition, Hyundai Steel produced visual content combining actual images, animations and games to help children better understand the process of recycling.

"We used driving test and control center programs to make it easy and fun for children to understand the steel industry and introduce them to related jobs in the field. We hope our renewed experience center will help them learn the outstanding eco-friendliness of steel materials that we use throughout our lives," a Hyundai Steel official said.

The company has also begun a month-long event selecting the best social media reviews of the Eco-Friendly Steelworks experience center. The winners will be selected through a lucky draw and Hyundai Steel will give out free entrance tickets to KidZania. More details will be announced on the company's official Instagram account.