The wonders of the Hi Seoul Festival make themselves known yet again. Quickly becoming a spectacle of Seoul, this once-a-season festival is actually an umbrella for several dozen smaller festivals. Each smaller festival has their own space and time within the Hi Seoul festival, but don’t even try to see everything. At your very best you could see a significant amount of what’s going on, but too many things are happening in too many places at the same time to see it all.
The visitors center, set up solely for the Hi Seoul Festival in front of City Hall / Seoul Plaza.
Inside the visitors center – a very large map with lights to indicate where various elements were. For food, press one button on the white stand; for entertainment press another button.
A computer center setup for the purpose of connecting visitors with the official Hi Seoul Festival website (which, as of January 2020, no longer works)…
After receiving a 100+ page book on the festival, schedule, locations, and the directions, I wandered down to Cheonggyecheon where the opening ceremony would be. The stage was all set up, but since it was still early I wandered further down the stream.
Quite possibly some of the more…interesting… dresses I’ve seen in my life… If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I’m not going to risk the only two I have…
A kid-size cocoon. Just off to the right was a volunteer giving the kids markers and a chance to write their own message on the inside.
Need a caricature drawn? The crowd was enough to completely surround the artist – as I’ve said previously, it’s usually a good bet when the Koreans gather around a rather ‘touristy’ thing.
Before long the opening ceremony was about to begin:
Not a seat (or decent standing-only place) could be found – the venue was either WAY too small or there were far more people on hand than expected… Thankfully, the streets on either side of the stream were closed to traffic, allowing at least a little more walkway than normal.
Taken from some distance away, part of the opening ceremony brought on some flag wavers.
Not being able to get any closer, I moved on down the road aways to find a number of other concerts and performances.
A Korean band performing on the street – one nice thing about many festivals in Seoul is that it’s not concentrating all its firepower in one place (although the opening ceremony was pretty heavily emphasized – and attended).
Some more wandering around the downtown area led me to the following:
Located in a nearby parking lot, it’s a replica of 첨성대 (Cheom-seong-dae), an astronomical observatory in Gyeongju. It’s a tall (10-12 meters, perhaps 30-35 feet) structure with shining car headlights. I cannot make this up. Somebody probably has too much time on their hands, or they’re trying to illuminate the city more than it already is… Who knows?
I walked back to the Cheonggyecheon area, hoping once again to see some portion of the opening ceremony. I could occasionally make out some portions of the big-screen, but never the stage. It was sort of a shame, since the Korean National Ballet was performing.
A parting shot of Cheonggyecheon… for now…
