Ultra Korea Music Festival

Ultra Korea Music Festival was held on 14th and 15th of June in Seoul Olympic Complex near Jamsil station. It is a huge music festival of its kind in Korea which is held once a year with lots of people, excitement and energy.

As a representative supporter of KTO, I managed to visit this festival on its first day, 14th of june, in the evening around 6 pm. When I reached the Jamsil station and found my way to Olympic stadium, I saw a huge number of people gathered around Olympic stadium with colorful dresses and smiles on their faces.                                 After getting the ticket, and waiting for my fellow supporters, along with the KTO staff, I entered the Olympic stadium. The whole stadium was almost full of people. Although, the festival was not started officially yet but the people were already dancing and enjoying. First we did a volunteer activity and then went to the main stadium ground for the ceremony.

Different DJs were rocking the floor and the people were just crazily dancing on the high beats of music. First we watched it just an observers and afterwards, we made our way into the conglomeration of people. Going in the mid of the gathering, we started dancing along with the other people. There was a lot of symmetry and energy in dance moves of the people and music beats making it a memorable and highly enjoyable event. We enjoyed the music and liveliness. 

 At the end, the best DJ in world AVICII was invited to the stage who was awaited for long. He really rocked the stage and the audience with his great selection of music beats.                                                                                                                                                           

Visit to Three Royal Tombs, Paju Samneung

Visit to Three Royal Tombs (Samneung Paju)

As ambassadors of Invest Korea, we visited Three Royal Tombs in Samneung, Paju city. Amid rain and high spirits, we walked through the area which was quite nice in first impression. The place was managed quite well with a nice tour guide. The place consists of three tombs namely Gongneung, Sulleung, and Yeongneung.

Gongneung is the tomb of Queen Jangsun (1445-1461), 1^st consort to King Yejong, the 8^th monarch of Joseon Dynasty. She was third daughter of a politician Han Myeong-hoe. She became crown princess in 1460 and gave birth to Prince Inseong.

Sulleung is the tomb of Queen Gonghye who was 1^st consort to King Seongjong, the 9^th monarch of Joseon Dynasty. She was the younger sister of queen Jangsun. She married to the King Seongjong( who was not a king that time but a prince) in 1467 at the age of 12. She died at the age of 19 without leaving any child behind.

Yeongneung is the tomb of posthumous King Jinjong and Queen Hyosun. Crown prince Hyojang was conferred the posthumous title of King Jinjong. Queen Hyosun(1715-1751) fr from the Jo family was invested as crown princess in 1727. After her husband died, she lived alone until her death at the age of 37. She had no children.

These tombs of Joseon Dynasty are included in the UNESCO world heritage list. The interesting thing of these tombs is their symbolism. Around every tomb, some sculptures have been made standing which symbolizes different things. These also denote the ancestral worship of the Joseon Dynasty. Around tombs, there were a few statues of animals such as tigers and sheep which denoted the safeguard of the tomb. There were also some human statues symbolizing the ministers of the spirits lying in the tomb. Overall tour was very interesting. Although, the rain started heavily during our visit but we enjoyed being there.

B Boys Competition

on fifth of May,2013, the event of B Boys competition was held in Seoul in KTO headquarter where there were a plenty of people to see and enjoy the free style dancing. As Korea is on its boom to develop tourism industry rather it has gained a bundle of fame and success so far, many of the organizations are working and supporting to create interesting and worth seeing activities/performances to attract as many people as possible throughout the world. KTO is one of the organizations supporting K-Pop and presenting to the world its essence of competitiveness and success.

The competition started with full zeal and the performers were well prepared and quite well versed in their dances. A few teams were knocked out in the beginning but all the others gave each other a tough time for competition and many matches ended with a tie and decided on a second try. The most interesting thing was a girl b boy dancer who was equally equipped with the dancing capabilities as compared to the boys dances being one of the few girls dancers in this field.

The final decision was really very very tough as the competitions were ended two times in tie and after a third try, a team was considered winner. The last match was really an excitement. I liked the waves of energy and liveliness present in the performers to win the competition. The interaction of the performers with the audience was also remarkable.





At the end, a celebrity Jay Park showed up on the stage. The level of excitement at that time was worth seeing. He shared a few words with the team and with the audiences and was presented with souvenirs. Overall the show was great and was a good source of enjoyment and was a proof of Korean B boys professionalism.

Welcome Party of K-Performance Supporters

K-Performance Supporters Season 2 - Welcome Party

Along with many other activities to promote Korean Culture and Tourism Industry, Korean Tourism Organization (KTO) is leaving no stone unturned to promote Korean Performances for the outer world. KTO is managing a program of recruiting foreigners living in Korea as K-Performance supporters, letting them watch K-Performance shows, and Korean Culture and in return the members are expected to promote the events by writing blogs related to the activities attended. It is basically one of many efforts of the Korean government to turn the Korean society into a Multi-cultural public which is considered to be a closed society unlike other developed countries. Korean performances are already on their way of promotion through media either it is print or televised but this activity is a tremendous effort to bring K-Performances to the front by a two-way process of blogging by foreigners as the expatriates would mix with the Koreans as a first step and then the people living in outer world would know about the Korean culture and K-Performances by reading blogs by foreigners living in Korea.

K-Performance Supporters Season-1 which was organized in 2012 remained quite successful letting seven K-performance supporters win different prizes ranging from money in cash to return air ticket to some tourist place in Korea. The last year’s project was a kind of small one as compared to this year’s plan as the number of K-Supporters recruited this year is quite large which would bring more positivistic results hopefully in respect of the goals. 

Being a foreigner in Korea, and being interested in Korean Culture and Korean Performances, I applied to KTO to work as K-Performance Supporter and after getting selected, I attended the very first activity namely Welcome Party on 5^th of April, Friday. It was started by a dinner in K-Pop Concert Hall, Gungnum, followed by a short ceremony of giving prizes to the best supporters of last season. Afterwards, on 3^rd floor of the hall, a K-performance show started which was quite entertaining rather marvelous. 

Many dance and B-Boys performances were shown on Korean and English music making it a beautiful blend of "Konglish" in nature. The event was attended by many foreigners living in Korea between 20 to 35 years of age approximately from 64 countries of the world. I enjoyed the energy level and commitment of the foreigners to the event that they contributed with full zeal. During the performances, some performers called some participants from the audience on stage and it was very interesting to see them moving on beats without the fear of symmetry in their moves and yes, they did well. I enjoyed being there a lot and it was far more than my expectations. Another worth mentioning point is that the performers were very interactive with the audiences. They not only performed well but they introduce themselves with the audiences in a proper way one by one and remained interactive throughout the performances.