□  The 2020 K-Culture Festival, which was held throughout November, ended on November 29. 

□  Jointly organized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST, Minister Park Yang-woo) and the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange (KOFICE, President Kim Yongrak), the event promoted the continued spread of Hallyu and raised the growth potential of related industries by introducing various aspects of Korean culture through K-pop concerts, Ga-deurim (regional tourism hubs cities tours) videos, and a special online K-Culture Market. 

□  New Hallyu Trends for Food, Clothing and Tours

Ga-deurim introduced food items and things to enjoy and places to visit in four regional tourism hubs – Mokpo, Jeonju, Gangneung, and Andong. A total of 24 YouTube videos released every day during the festival period fascinated viewers around the globe. People from approximately 80 countries, including Argentina and Saudi Arabia viewed the videos, with 160,000 likes and 9,000 comments (as of December 4).

□  Online K-Pop concerts recorded a growing number of viewers as they were released one by one every Sunday during the period. As many as 40 K-pop teams, including KANGDANIEL, YeSung (SUPER JUNIOR-K.R.Y.), TOMORROW X TOGETHER, and NCT U, joined the concerts. In particular, the K-Pop concert held in Andong under the theme of K-performance recorded the highest real-time views at approximately 210,000 among the four concerts, as the grand finale.    

□  Successful Online Market that Connected Local Merchants to Consumers across Korea 

The K-Culture Festival chose four weekly themes for four different cities and ran the Ga-deurim (tour content) program, a K-pop concert and a K-Culture Market (special online sales event) each week, creating a synergetic effect of drawing more attention to these events.

□  In particular, the K-Culture Market was quite popular with the set number of discount coupons prepared for sales promotion all being downloaded early. Hanwoo(Korean beef) was the most popular in terms of sales, followed by Kimchi and traditional alcoholic beverages.  

□  Small business owners who joined the special sales event said, “We were only doing offline business and thus had a difficult time due to COVID-19. We initiated online sales thanks to the special sales event, and it really helped us find a new market. The sales volume went up by more than two to three times. We definitely want to join the next event, if possible,” expressing their gratitude.  

□  TikTok Challenge Continues K-Culture Fever

Even though the K-Culture Festival is over, a TikTok challenge continues the fever. 

□  One can post a TikTok dance challenge video with ‘#kculturechallenge’, following the video of Hyoyeon of Girls' Generation on the mobile video platform. Her challenge video features easy-to-follow dance movements so that anyone can easily learn and enjoy K-Culture with no language barrier. 

□  Participants who are well-received will be given a gift, including Korean electronic devices, K-Beauty gift sets, and random K-Culture gift boxes. The TikTok challenge will be held until December 8, and prize recipients will be announced on the K-Culture Festival’s TikTok account (kculturefestival.official). 

□  President of the KOFICE said, “The festival showed that various aspects of Korean culture, including Hanbok (traditional Korean clothing) and Korean food in addition to K-Pop are attractive items for Hallyu content to people around the world. We will widen the horizon of Hallyu by discovering and introducing new cultural content.”