LONG BEACH – The World Kite Museum in Long Beach celebrates the 2007 Lunar New Year by featuring a Korean kite exhibit and other Korean paper crafts on Feb. 24 and 25. On this weekend, the museum offers a dollar discount on admission, which includes a museum tour, the paper crafts event and making a kite.

“The Korean Kite Story,” a new exhibit at the museum, includes replicas of the unique signal kites used by Admiral Yi Sun-sin in the 1590s war with Japan. The kite decoration is a code to direct the Army and Navy. Visitors can decode messages and send messages in kite code.

Other kites in the exhibit are decorated with both the folk and fine arts of Korea. The popular game of kite fighting and its amazing use of a spinning line winder is a third Korean category. A short video of the flying technique plays regularly.

The Tae-Geuk fans from the Cho, Chung-ik Fan Exhibition that was part of the 2003 centennial year of Korean Immigration to the United States in Honolulu is a very special part of this Korean Paper Arts show. Mrs. HyonCha Koga will be here to answer questions and tell stories.

The making of hanji (paper made from the bark of the mulberry tree) used in the paper arts will be displayed in its various stages. Other paper crafts on exhibit involve finely decorated paper boxes and elaborate dolls.

On this Saturday and Sunday the Museum opens at 10 a.m. and closes at 5 p.m. For more information call 642-4020.