Cultural festival to be held near DMZ on Saturday

The “DMZ Transformation Peace Hanmadang” festival, which reflects people’s desire to transform the demilitarized zone (DMZ) into a peaceful place, will be held at the Camp Greaves in Paju for two days starting from October 27. The Camp Greaves, which is located 2 kilometers south of the DMZ, had been a camp base for the U.S. army since July 1953 and was returned to Korea in 2007. Currently it is being used as a DMZ Experience Center.

The “DMZ Transformation Peace Hanmadang” festival, which is co-hosted by the culture ministry and Gyeonggi Province and co-supervised by the Korea Tourism Organization and Gyeonggi Tourism Organization, is a cultural and art festival, featuring exhibitions, street performances, special performances, and cultural experience programs, according to Gyeonggi-do on Monday.

The festival will open on Saturday at 4 p.m. and end at 7 p.m. The opening performance will be featured by a zither-contrabass crossover performance and a reading of a peace poem. There will be a mask dance (talchum) performance, combining the Yangju Byeolsandae mask dance and Gangnyeong mask dance together. Another popular attraction will be a mask dance performance featuring South Korea’s Andong mask dance and North Korea’s Gangnyeong mask dance.

The “Mozaic Korea” performance, an ensemble of Korean traditional instruments playing folks songs from the South and the North, is to share the cultural homogeneity of the two Koreas. The highlight of the festival would be the “Telematics Concert,” where the artists from Berlin, San Francisco, and Korea are connected in real time to perform together to heat up the stage.

The “DMZ Eoullim Concert,” which is co-supervised by the Korea Tourism Organization and Gyeonggi Tourism Organization, will be held on Sunday from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. An orchestra of 33 students from the Seoul Waldorf School will play four classical music, including Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II. A U.S. 8th Army Band “Dragon Sound” will play a variety of music, including folk, k-pop, and pop songs.

A North Korean performance team will reenact the performance by the Mansudae art company, playing the Haegeum and accordion. The team will also sing well-known North Korean pop songs such as “Nice to Meet You” and “Whistle” and perform a dance from the Goryeo Dynasty.


lkj@donga.com