Andong City Abruptly Cancels 'International Talchum Festival'... "Will Ease Disappointment with a Small-Scale Cultural Festival"

Opening ceremony celebration performance of the '2019 Andong International Mask Dance Festival'.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Dongguk Lee] Andong City and the Andong Festival Tourism Foundation announced on the 26th that they held a board meeting of the Andong Festival Tourism Foundation on the 25th and decided to cancel the 'Andong International Mask Dance Festival 2021' to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Originally, the Mask Dance Festival was being prepared with great effort to be held in a diversified manner, including both online and offline events, depending on the social distancing level, for ten days from September 24 to October 3 this year.

However, Andong City explained that this decision was inevitably made as the daily new COVID-19 cases recently have been fluctuating around 2,000, the spread continues, and variant coronaviruses are rampant.

The Mask Dance Festival, a cultural and artistic event representing South Korea that attracts more than one million domestic and foreign visitors annually, has earned the titles of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism's Best Festival for six consecutive years, Representative Festival for three consecutive years, and Honorary Representative Festival for four consecutive years since its inception in 1997.

Additionally, it has been selected as a Global Nurturing Festival for five consecutive years and is now firmly established as one of the top five Honorary Representative Cultural Tourism Festivals of South Korea.

Andong City is planning a small-scale cultural festival in October linked with the Korea Balanced Development Expo as a way to fill the disappointment and frustration caused by the cancellation of the Mask Dance Festival and to support the activities of local cultural figures.

An official from Andong City said, "We will take this crisis as an opportunity and prepare next year's festival with richer and more diverse programs to demonstrate the status of a global festival."

Meanwhile, the Andong International Mask Dance Festival was previously canceled in 2009 due to the H1N1 influenza epidemic and in 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.