Hwaseong Cultural Festival and Sancheoneo Festival, Now Festivals for the World

Government Selected for 'Global Festival'... Customized Strategy Established
Incheon Pentaport Music Festival Also Aims to Become Korean-style SXSW

The Incheon Pentaport Music Festival, Suwon Hwaseong Cultural Festival, and Hwacheon Sancheoneo Festival are set to leap forward as global events. On the 14th, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Tourism Organization announced that these three festivals were recognized for their significant potential in the global festival development contest. They plan to strategically support them until 2026 to develop them into national representative festivals that will usher in an era of 20 million inbound tourists.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Global festival development is a project that selects festivals with high growth potential and supports them to attract visitors worldwide. It widely promotes differentiated attractions such as music, traditional culture, and winter experiences. Park Jong-taek, Director of the Tourism Policy Bureau at the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, explained, "We focus on having content attractive to everyone, a guidance system that meets world-class standards, and competitive services without overcharging."

The Ministry analyzes content characteristics and transportation accessibility to diagnose preliminary tasks and prepares customized strategies through an expert evaluation advisory group. Director Park added, "We plan to support step-by-step, from improving reception readiness such as transportation, accommodation, and multilingual guidance, to one-on-one exchanges with the world’s top 10 festivals, securing fixed demand for inbound tourism products, and international promotion."

The Jeongjo King Royal Procession event, the highlight of the Suwon Hwaseong Cultural Festival, is being reenacted.

This year, the support fund allocated is 660 million KRW (national subsidy) per festival. Additionally, overseas demonstration events will be held. Director Park stated, "We will form a 'Global Festival Council' with the three festivals to share strategies for attracting foreign tourists and jointly plan promotional marketing events," adding, "Through continuous monitoring, we aim to increase foreign tourists by more than 100% and stimulate the local economy."

The Incheon Pentaport Music Festival is a rock event featuring about 50 top-tier domestic and international artists. It is advantageous for attracting foreign tourists due to transportation convenience and abundant accommodation facilities. The goal is to become a Korean version of South by Southwest (SXSW). They are determined to demonstrate scalability as a global festival by newly promoting the 'Pentaport Showcase,' which invites numerous overseas music industry professionals and supports the overseas expansion of Korean music.

The Suwon Hwaseong Cultural Festival is centered around the UNESCO World Heritage site Suwon Hwaseong Fortress and offers Korean history, tradition, culture, and art content such as reenactments of King Jeongjo’s royal procession. It has the highest scores in overseas recognition and favorability surveys, with well-established multilingual guidance systems. Moving forward, it plans to leverage its rich linked tourism resources such as gourmet food, shopping, drama filming locations, and Haengnidan-gil street tourism to focus on attracting foreign tourists in their 20s and 30s.

The Hwacheon Sancheoneo Festival is the largest winter event in Korea, held in a small mountain village with a population of 23,000. Last year alone, it attracted 1.31 million visitors who spent about 86.5 billion KRW. Going forward, it will focus on family tourists from Southeast Asia and the Middle East, regions without winter. The target number of foreign tourists is 150,000 by 2027. An official said, "We plan to develop 'Winter Experience in Korea' as a product and improve issues such as insufficient accommodation by linking with nearby cities and counties."

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