Jinju Lantern Festival - Saturday

Jinju is known throughout Korea for it's beauty, silk, and the Lantern Festival. I've seen the flowers etc. that make it pretty, I've finally found the Silk museum but have yet to do it, and this week was the start of the Lantern festival.

During the war in 1592, lanterns were used as a way for the Korean army to communicate with each other. So the festival was designed to honor the soldiers who fought against the Japanese invasion. It's every year from October 1st through the 12th. I was very excited about it because it was a local event and it's apparently one of the best in Korea.

Saturday was the first day this year and it started off well. A bunch of Liezle's friends and Cindy's Daegu friends came to town. We met up and hung out for a bit and then went down to the musical fountain where they had a slightly crappy "parade" that basically consisted of people pushing huge lanterns (that were later set up on a different street) down the road with a couple of bands in between.

After the parade, we went down into the center of the fountain area where various lanterns were already lit up. This was the cartoon section and included Spider man, Batman, Superman, the Smurfs, Popeye and various other cartoon characters. After taking lots of pictures, we crossed over to the opposite side of the river to watch the fireworks.

Ladies and Batman

He's faster than a speeding bullet, but for the fact that he's stationary

Me and Spidey

Smurfs (or in the Konglish from the program, the Smuffs)

Liezle using the metal hoop for traditional Korean games as a hula hoop

The area for the festival was mainly between two large concrete bridges on either side of the castle and the musical fountain. For the festival, 3 "water bridges" were set up. They're basically plastic floats tied together. It feels sort of like walking on a waterbed. That night, Liezle, Dan and I crossed bridge #1 and met the rest of our group on the other side.

Liezle and Dan on the bridge

On the opposite side, we went into half of the student tent. The high schools and middles schools in Jinju let students create their own lanterns and there is a contest before the festival begins. They hang all the lanterns in one huge tent. This is one of my favorite parts of the festival because you can see some really creative ones.

Group standing in front of the student lanterns tent

Kung fu panda kicking a shark

 

Lots of angry birds - this one was one of the best

 

Small section of the student tent ceiling

After we walked down about half of the tent, we left to watch the fireworks next to the river. They were really good. The best part were these 2 birds that floated, burst into flame, then turned back into birds. I only caught the last part on video. After fireworks, Liezle's crowd was ready to go to a bar. Considering it wasn't even 9pm yet, my friend Kyle and I decided to go to dinner instead. We went to a cute Italian place. The experience was very weird for us because there were a ton of people (including foreign foreigners) and Jinju is usually not busy.

After dinner we went to a little bar next to the restaurant because it looked cute and neither of us had been there before. It was a nice bar, but they only sold beer, or bottles of wine (cheapest $35) so we only had one drink. While we were at the table, a very inebriated elderly Korean man came up to us and started talking. He spoke decent English, but he was very quiet so we couldn't hear much of what he was saying. We pieced together that at some point during his military service, he was in a helicopter and had or was a translator. The one thing we did hear clearly was, "Do you like Korean men?". We both sort of shrugged that one.

After our drink, we went to Beast Bar to meet Liezle and Cindy and their respective groups. Kyle left really early. I stayed awhile and chatted with everyone. It was very full of foreigners, most from out of town, so again it was a little weird. I did get to see the fire show this time. I think it's hilarious that people just bring out flaming bottles of alcohol and nobody cares.

Cindy, me, Spencer and Dan at Beast Bar

Sunday was the IEC retreat (see last post) so I didn't go again over the weekend. Monday - Wednesday I was lazy and didn't go back. Thursday after work I met up with a few people and some of us stayed out until after 1. It was great because hardly anyone was there and we were able to get some good pictures. I also went again Friday afternoon with Liezle, Friday evening with Cindy and Liezle and I hope to go at least one more time before the end. I will post and give more details about Thursday - the end of the festival in later posts, otherwise this will be huge. I will tell you that out of over a dozen things I wanted to do at the festival, I only have 5 things left on my list, including a repeat.