Gimje Horizon Festival

This past weekend, we headed to the south of the country to enjoy the Gimje Horizon Festival. We thought that this festival was all about rice but it turned out to be an agricultural festival. We had to travel for four hours to get there, which was exhausting but as always we had a spectacular time.

One of the most awesome things about Gimje was its flatness. This might sound like a strange thing to rave on about, but it really does strike you as amazing when you see it. Let me explain...In South Africa we often see vast plains of just flat land but in South Korea there are always several mountains in sight. Korean mountains are incredibly beautiful but they are everywhere so we were surprised to find a small part of the country this flat. It's no wonder Gimje is big on its farming.

Flat Gimje

Anyway, back to the festival. It was good old fashion innocent fun! We got a chance to catch locusts in a rice field; we also watched a kite flying exhibition, which was great! Unfortunately we missed the making of the longest rice cake (Tteok) in the world but we did get to see the table it was made on....and man-oh-man was it looooooooooong (Over 200m)! We also fed some milk cows (which were super cute), we ate the freshest apples ever, we got to see a whole bunch of the harvesting equipment and we also got to go to an observatory were we had an incredible view!

Catching locusts

Flying kites

A looooong string of kites! Too cool!

We also had a celebrity moment where we were spotted by KBS (a television network in South Korea) and interviewed about the festival. It was all quite funny and super awkward! They positioned us so that the sun was directly in our eyes, and then told us to take off our caps and sunglasses so that we were squinting into the sun. We then did a small we love Korea and the festival is great before the film crew asked us to rattle off (in Korean) that we love the festival. I couldn't get the Korean down, I think it was because I simply couldn't concentrate due to the absurdity of being interviewed! So Oliver went solo in the Korean outro and I joined in with a quick FIGHTING (A Korean phrase which is like saying let's go or Viva).

KBS Crew

Later on we were spotted by another film crew and fed barley Soju for the cameras....they really seemed to want to get a whole bunch down me but after three shots I really had to say thank you and do a semi run-jog type thing away from the Soju stand.

Other than that it was a relaxed very, family orientated festival! We had a fantastic time, we are just sad that the journey to Gimje and back was soooo long because we would have liked to have explored the town a little more!

Maybe next time....

Post by Claudia