Gangjin's Celadon Culture Festival (강진청자문화축제) attracted some 680,000 people over nine days---the Gangjin Shinmun says 650,000---up from 410,000 last year. That's a nice turn-out for a township that ordinarily has a population of under 2,000, in a county of 41,575.
Helping things, I'm sure, was that the festival's opening night had a concert with SS501, Jang Yoon jung, Ran, and others (small photo gallery here). Yoon Do-hyun was also there, and he's likely to have brought his noraebang-friendly hit "사랑했나봐." SS501, damn, that's pretty big for Gangjin. My students would have been all over that like . . . well, like middle school students at an SS501 concert. Other attractions included fashion designer Andre Kim,
international marriages
, and white people.
Roughly 6,000 foreigners attended, according to one article, and practically every photo album I browsed on Naver contained at least one photo of foreigners doing something or other, thus keeping alive the belief that having white people at your event in Korea lends novelty and legitimacy to it. I wish I could have attended, but it was held while I was still in the US. The festival was typically held in the fall, and was in October when I went in 2006, and in September last year. Lots of good photos available via a Naver search, and some videos as well.
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