Credit where credit is due, the folks at the Gwangju Kimchi Festival did the seemingly impossible in Korea, and made a wonderful English-language slogan.
Have you ever heard of "kimchi"? I will introduce you about that. Kimchi is national dish of Korea. So almost of Korean people love kimchi. There is Kimchi Festival in Gwangju. So I think you can enjoy many kinds of kimchi there. If you live in Korea, you can know about kimchi well. But I think maybe you can't eat spicy food. And as the Joongang Ilbo says, not only will the Gwangju Kimchi Festival (광주김치문화축제) take place in . . . Gwangju, from October 23rd through November 1st, but it will tour the country.
The Gwangju Kimchi Cultural Festival 2009 will go on the road from Oct. 23 to Nov. 1, visiting Seoul, Busan, Daegu and Daejeon in addition to the host city of Gwangju.
“The Gwangju Kimchi Cultural Festival is fast becoming a global festival,” said Park Kwang-tae, mayor of Gwangju city, at a European Union Chamber of Commerce networking party last Thursday.
Given kimchi's role as a folk remedy and antidote to all sorts of diseases---including swine flu---it's only fitting that it, unlike some other festivals in the country, has not been cancelled due to this latest panic.
I plan to have a fuller write-up of this event later in the season, but this article tells us there are a lot of attractions to look forward to.
The main programs of the festival will include kimchi exhibitions, an international conference on the globalization of kimchi, cultural events such as a kimchi talk show and an environment-friendly kimchi field trip, according to organizers.
Not on the program, but nevertheless an important part of the week-long festival, is the chance to photograph foreigners elbow-deep and ridiculous in the national dish (1, 2, 3).
I wonder how many of those visitors knew they have been featured on official festival promotional material, and in one case the winners of a photo contest. Well, in spite of that annoyance---and there are some interesting comments on that phenomenon on this thread---it's an all right time. This year will be a little different, because instead of taking place at and around the Gwangju Folk Museum, it will be held at and around the World Cup Stadium. For more information, check the multi-lingual official site, and check my page later for stuff about this and other fall festivals in the Jeollanam-do region.
3 comments:
Your imitation of a Korean student's writing is superb, sir. Well played.
i agree. spot-on.
Thanks for the kind words. It's not just a student's writing, because that "Have you ever heard of ____?" seems to be a pretty standard introduction. But the trick is in the conjunctions, especially staring sentences with "so."
I hope to do it again real soon.
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