“The K-area festival is fascinated by foreigners.”
The K-regional festival is showing signs of taking over the baton of K-pop, K-beauty, and K-content. This year, foreign tourists are occupying the site of a local festival enjoyed by our people.
The K-area festival is attracting foreigners as the trend of “dailyization” in which people enjoy traveling in daily life like locals has spread.
K Culture Enjoys It as a Local Festival
Enjoy K Culture as a local festival.’ It is the new normal of the endemic K-tourism of foreigners. This is the result of Maeil Economy’s analysis of changes in the behavior of foreign visitors visiting the festival based on big data from the Korea Tourism Organization’s “Korea Tourism Data Lab”.
The survey utilized KT mobile communication big data for 70 cultural and tourism festivals, preliminary festivals, and major regional festivals held from January to October from 2019 to 2024.
Of particular note is the night time zone. Like Koreans, they occupy the night time zone.
While foreigners’ visits to festivals have recovered with a 68% increase compared to the previous year, night and early morning hours (6 p.m. ~)The proportion of visits at 6 a.m. the next day increased by more than 6.5 percentage points compared to 2019 before the COVID-19 outbreak.
In particular, the golden time when they flock is Saturday evening (4.2% in 2019 → 5.8% in 2024). Visiting the local festival in the evening is significant. In fact, it signals a shift to a stay-at-home type that stays for more than a day.
Why are foreigners particularly enthusiastic about our local festivals? Festival experts say it is thanks to the spread of cultural and artistic content.
The proportion of visits by festival type this year was in the order of nature and tourism festivals (32.6%), culture and arts festivals (25.0%), traditional culture festivals (21.8%), and local specialty festivals (20.7%). In particular, local specialty festivals decreased by 30.3 percentage points compared to 2019, while culture and arts festivals increased by 13.0 percentage points from 2019.
Foreigners who are fascinated by K contents such as “Squid Game” are flocking to cultural and artistic festivals. Chuncheon Mime Festival and Busan International Rock Festival, which saw a 267.2% surge in visitor growth compared to last year, are representative. In addition, the number of foreign visitors increased significantly compared to the previous year, including the Cheonan Heungtaryeong Dance Festival (143.3%), the Tamna Cultural Festival (48.5%), and the Incheon Pentaport Music Festival (27.1%).
It is interpreted that it has attracted great attention from foreign visitors to Korea by providing an opportunity to experience various K contents.
Foreigners also enjoy the ‘Autumn Festival.’
Fall is definitely the season when the most foreign visitors to the festival are gathered. As expected, it’s the endemic new normal.
Before the COVID-19 outbreak, foreigners flocked to winter fishing festivals such as the Sancheoneo Festival. CNN also cited the Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival as one of the winter wonder festivals. The view is that the scene where more than 1 million visitors cast a rod on the ice in unison was mysterious.
Unlike the previous landscape, where the proportion of visitors to the festival in January was the highest at 32.8%, this year, the proportion of visitors in October reached a record high of 48.0%, drawing attention.
In particular, the Yeoju Ogoknaru Festival (683.7%), Yeongdong Nangye Gugak Festival (169.6%), Suwon Hwaseong Cultural Festival (71.1%), Jinju Namgang Yudeung Festival (70.9%), Gwangju Memorial Festival (63.5%), and Tamna Cultural Festival (48.5%) held in October.
While winter festivals have been reduced due to abnormal weather conditions, autumn festivals, which are good for outdoor activities, are actively held and are analyzed as a result of their popularity.
Lee Mi-sook, head of the tourism data strategy team at the Korea Tourism Organization, said, “Due to the nature of the festival sensitive to weather changes, strategies that can flexibly respond to the climate and develop various contents are required.”
The No. 1 festival for foreign visitors is Gangwon-do.
Gangwon Province has the highest proportion of foreign visitors this year. Of the total visitors, 16.9% visited Gangwon Province. Of course, this is a 22.4 percentage point decrease compared to 2019, before COVID-19. On the other hand, Seoul (13.1%), Jeju (11.1%) and Chungnam (10.2%) increased 4.9 percentage points, 5.7 percentage points, and 1.8 percentage points, respectively, compared to 2019.
The Jeju Tamna Cultural Festival was designated as a preliminary festival by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism this year and attracted foreign attention, while the Boryeong Mud Festival in Chungnam and the Cheonan Heungtaryeong Dance Festival were popular with various experience programs.
Statistics by participating countries are also interesting. In terms of visitors to this year’s regional festival by country, China (21.8%), the United States (13.2%), Taiwan (11.9%), and Japan (7.6%). Visitors from each country show distinct differences in their preferred festivals according to different cultural backgrounds and gender and age groups.
Chinese visitors are enthusiastic about cultural and artistic festivals. This year, the visit rate was high to nature and tourism festivals (42.4%) such as the Seoul World Fireworks Festival and Boryeong Mud Festival, and culture and arts festivals (39.7%) such as the Tamna Cultural Festival and the Bupyeong Pungmuldae Festival in Incheon. In particular, the proportion of visits to culture and arts festivals surged 16.7 percentage points in 2024 compared to 2019.
The U.S. is a jjamppong type. The number of visitors to the American festival increased 138% compared to last year. In addition to the Suwon Hwaseong Cultural Festival (Nature and Tourism Festival), various types of festivals such as Chuncheon Mime Festival (Culture and Arts Festival), Jinju Namgang Yudeung Festival (traditional culture festival), and Hwacheon Sancheoneo Festival (local special product festival) tend to be enjoyed evenly.
Japan enjoys it like a local. It is unusual to prefer natural and tourism festivals (42.4%) such as the Seoul International Fireworks Festival, Suwon Hwaseong Cultural Festival, Boryeong Mud Festival, and Daejeon 0 City Festival. They are also highly interested in cultural and artistic festivals (24.6%) such as the Incheon Pentaport Music Festival and the Busan International Rock Festival. The pattern of visits is similar to that of Koreans in their 20s, who are trendy and have high Instagram sensitivity.
Taiwanese tourists mainly visit local specialty festivals. In addition to the Hwacheon Sancheoneo Festival, the proportion of visits to local specialty festivals such as the Daegu Yakryeong Oriental Medicine Culture Festival and the Geumsan World Ginseng Festival was the highest at 66.3%. It is analyzed as a pattern reflecting the high interest in health in the Chinese region and the characteristics of those in their 40s (20%) who have a high rate of visiting Korea.
Yoo Jin-ho, head of the Tourism Contents Strategy Division of the Korea Tourism Organization, said, “The corporation has focused on developing products for visiting Korea in connection with local festivals and promoting traditional and new media to attract foreign tourists. We will continue to develop detailed tourism contents tailored to the characteristics of each country to help resolve regional extinction.”
[Shin Ik-su Travel Reporter]
