If you’re a parent in Korea, you know the drill: open the school’s site or NEIS portal, squint at a dense monthly meal table, and try to remember which of your kids reacts to what. Do it for two kids at two different schools and it stops being a quick check and starts being a chore you keep forgetting.
I built Geupsikkok because I was doing this manually every week for my own family. Korea’s NEIS system publishes official school meal plans, allergy codes and all, but it wasn’t built to filter for one specific kid’s allergies or flag a favorite dish buried in next week’s menu. I wanted something that would just tell me the night before, so I’m not scrambling over breakfast.
What it does
- Sends a notification the evening before using the school’s official allergy code system (1-19), matched against ingredients you mark as off-limits (things like mushrooms or eggplant) or menu items you’re hoping for (like chicken or tteokbokki). You choose 7 PM or 9 PM the night before, or 7 AM the same day, and it only pings you on days that actually match your criteria.
- Shows tomorrow’s lunch at a glance on the home screen, with a tray photo for each child and a count of items to watch out for. Menu details highlight the specific allergy codes and flagged items so you’re not scanning a wall of text.
- A monthly calendar view color-codes the days you need to pay attention to, and a home screen widget shows tomorrow’s menu without opening the app at all.
- Handles up to 5 children at once, each with their own school and separate breakfast, lunch, and dinner settings. School search shows both region and school level so you don’t accidentally pick the wrong school with a matching name.
- Lets you send tomorrow’s menu and precautions straight to a family group chat, with the option to include or leave out your child’s name.
- Keeps everything on your device. There’s no membership or account creation, and your child’s nickname, allergies, and conditions never leave your phone.
This is for parents who check their kid’s school lunch every day and want it to take less than a minute, especially families juggling two or more kids across different schools. It’s also handy for students themselves who just want to know if their favorite dish is coming up tomorrow. If you’re raising kids in Korea’s school system, or part of the Korean diaspora with children in a Korean school, this is built around a problem you already know well.
One honest caveat: the app can only flag what the school actually uploads to NEIS. If a school skips the allergy code for a dish, Geupsikkok can’t tell you there’s a risk, so it’s still worth checking with the school directly for anything serious, and no notification is a guarantee of safety.
Geupsikkok (originally launched in Korea as 급식콕) is free to try on Google Play. If you’ve ever double-checked a lunch menu at 11 PM out of worry, give it a shot and see if it saves you that trip.
