A Guide to Cherry Blossom Festival

The best date course for couples

By the end of March, and the begining of April, flowers are blooming everywhere around the Korean peninsula, “ Cherry blossom festival” period is already approaching ? You can see pastel pink colored flowers everywhere. In Japan, China, even Taiwan, hundreds of Cherry blossom festivals take place every year, But they are not that big. In Korea, you can experience something amazing.

What’s Cherry blossom?

Cherry blossom flowers may be a unfamiliar to foreigner. In Japanese, the word ‘Sakura’ is more famous . In Korean we call it ‘beojkkoch.’ The color of its petal is usually white and the middle part is pink. Some species have pink petal. Cherry blossom in bloom between the first week and second week of April and few days later it falls. Ancient people used it as a metaphor for vain beauty. In Eastern Asia, people usually go out with family or friends to enjoy the view of cherry blossoms in spring. It developed as local festival, called Hanami in Japanese or Kkochnori in Korean. And the most famous flower for these kind of festival is Cherry blossom.  

Recommended Cherry blossom festival in Korea

1)     Seokchon Lake Cherry blossom festival

Dates: April 5-12
Jamsil, the center of Seoul, has a clean, pure and pretty lake. There are various programs like caricature, face painting, traditional music festival, k-pop concert and so on. Also you can easily find many delicious food restaurant, café, shopping mall.

      2)     Yeouido Spring Flower Festival

Dates: April 5-11
This festival starts 2005. At first it was not that big but now it has history of 15 years and millions of tourists. From 7pm of 4/5 opening ceremony, K-pop singer BOL4, Kang san-e, Kim tae-woo will sing their hit song. The good thing of this festival is, there are not only cherry blossom, but also 13 different kinds of other spring flowers such as forsythia and azalea. April 11^th in 2019, the last day of festival, is 100^th anniversary of Korean provisional government. Not yet opened in official website, but people expect that some big event will occur in that day.

3)     Nami island Cherry blossom festival

Dates: April 13-May 12 every weekend
In chuncheon, we can go to Gapyeong station only 24 minutes by subway. From Gapyeong station, you can go to Nami island just 10 minutes by taxi(or 20 minutes by bus). In Nami island every weekend flea market and beer festival, snack bars appear and all we have to do is just enjoy them. You can also enjoy acoustic band busking.

 

<Cherry blossom and cotton candy and train, photo by visitkorea.or.kr>

Park Hyung Hun

<pandapark_@kangwon.ac.kr>