Namwon
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Template:Korean district logo Namwon (Namwon-si) is a city in North Jeolla Province, South Korea. Namwon is about 45 minutes from the provincial capital of Jeonju, which is 3 hours away from Seoul.
Chunhyang festival
Namwon City holds an annual event called the Chunhyang festival, which commemorates an ancient love story which may or may not have actually happened (it is probably best called a folk tale). This festival is said to be the oldest in Korea.
As the story goes, Chunhyang was a maiden who was taken advantage of by an immoral local governor who forced her to marry him while the young man she really loved was away on government affairs. When the young man returns, he disguises himself as a common person and sees for himself the myriad of injustices that the local governor has perpetrated, and so uses his authority to kill him and set things straight, and rescues the maiden. Presumably they live happily ever after.
Some claim this is actually a true story and have tried to set dates for its occurence. But whenever it was (or wasn't), the city of Namwon is the setting for it, and they commemorate it every year in a big event to which people from all over the country come to see. The main bridge that crosses the river that runs through the middle of the city is lit with fantastic lights, and along the river bank there are vendors selling food and items of all kinds. There are several main events like the Chunhyang beauty contest in which the most beautiful female residents of the city can enter, wearing their full Korean dress (chima jeogori). Then there is the Chunhyang parade which runs through cordoned sections of the city along the river bank, and which is comprised of just about the entire complement of the city's mid-grade schoolgirls (numbering probably in the low hundreds) who are dressed in full chogori and carry musical instruments of some type, who march in a very long line. There are also other parades of men and anyone else who is not a young girl can dress up in traditional dress and join the procession.
The festival lasts four days and top-notch fireworks blaze the skies every night.
For the rest of the year when the festival is not on, they have a small theme park dedicated to Chunhyang complete with hypothetical dwellings and surroundings that someone like Chunhyang would have had (a mock house and yard). There are other pleasant sights in the park that are not really Chunhyang-related, such as a fish pond where vistors are free to feed the fish, idyllic nature settings, and some old-fashioned swings and horseshoe-style throwing games. Outside the park, along the river bank, they also have mini paddle boats that couples can rent to traverse the small river for a fun daytime activity or for a romantic and private moonlit boat ride. Very popular in the summer, and refreshing.
See also
External links
- City government website (http://www.namwon.go.kr/eng/)
- Open Directory category (http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/South_Korea/Jeonbuk/Namwon/)