5-day, spectacle-filled Seoul Festa hopes to boost tourism

Seoul Festa's opening ceremony at Jamsil Sports Complex will feature a K-pop concert. Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Government

Five-day, city-wide event kicks off Aug. 10 in Jamsil

By Ko Dong-hwan

Less than a week remains until Seoul launches its first large-scale global festival since before the COVID-19 pandemic. This time, the Seoul Metropolitan Government is planning various spectacles for the eyes and ears that it hopes will send participating tourists all over the city.

Seoul Festa 2022 will open in Jamsil in Seoul's Songpa District on Aug. 10. Hosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, the festival is being jointly prepared by the government and thousands of local private firms, and will run until Aug. 14. With its main events happening at Jamsil Sports Complex, various smaller events will also occur in other areas such as Gwanghwamun, Yeouido and riverside parks along the Han River.

The city will open the festival with K-pop firepower. Sold out in five minutes after ticketing started online at Wemakeprice on July 29, the opening ceremony at the stadium will feature performances by over a dozen K-pop acts ― Rain, PSY, Stray Kids, NCT Dream and male vocal quartet Forestella, among others ― which will be broadcast live on television to 118 countries via KBS World. As many as 52,000 people flooded the online mall simultaneously for the tickets, according to the Seoul Tourism Organization which organized the festival's opening ceremony.

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Seeing the explosive reactions to the opening ceremony, the organizer has decided to prepare a second round of tickets for sale on Friday. "It has proven to be one big fireworks display to signal the return of Seoul for global tourists as the industry has struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic," an organization official said on Monday.

Another main event of Seoul Festa is the 2022 Hana Bank Seoul E-Prix, which hosts the 15th and 16th double-header rounds of ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, the race for the world's fastest electric vehicles. Eleven teams from the United States, France, England, India, Germany, China and Monaco will compete in a circuit that loops inside Jamsil Sports Complex and extends to the stadium's vicinity. Those watching the cars zipping around a 2.6-kilometer course with 22 bends will certainly get visual excitement, though not as much of an earful as traditional car races with internal combustion engines.

The city government said that the Seoul E-Prix not only will attract some 50,000 Formula E fans from across the world, but it also promotes itself as eco-friendly, through being the first international sports category to earn a certification for net-zero carbon emissions, a partner in the U.N. Environment Programme's #Beat Air Pollution campaign, and as having saved 300,000 single-use PET plastic bottles since 2018.

Racing cars compete in a Formula E race. Seoul Festa hosts the 2022 Hana Bank Seoul E-Prix, where the 15th and 16th double-header rounds of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship will be held. Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Government

In connection with the electric vehicle race, the festival will showcase electric cars and urban aerial mobility rides outside the stadium throughout the festival for visitors to enjoy and experience ― including what it's like to drive a Formula E racing car via a simulator. A view of the city's future traffic situation will be available for a close-up look at Next Seoul Mobility, a pavilion set up inside Jamsil Sports Complex. The fun will be pumped up by W&W, Fedde Grande, Galantis and other DJs during a music festival at another stadium next to the Jamsil Sports Complex from Aug. 11 to 13.

Seoul Festa will also welcome shoppers with a plethora of sales of as much as 50 percent off for products on shelves offered by about 3,000 private firms in hotel, beauty, experience hotspots and other tourism-related industries. These sales are being jointly run with the country's annual Korea Grand Sale, hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

The Han River is one of the festival's other main bases, with events for tourists interested in yachting and wind surfing, photo exhibitions by amateur photographers and displays of sculptures from around the world. Those who want to hang out more around Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul ― which will unveil the newly renovated public space on Saturday after 21 months of construction ― won't miss a single moment of the opening ceremony and Seoul E-Prix in Jamsil by watching the events on giant outdoor screens in the area.

"Seoul tourism declined over the past three years following the COVID-19 outbreak," said an official from the Tourism Policy Division under the city government's Tourism and Sports Bureau. The number of tourists to Seoul peaked at 13.9 million in 2019 but dropped to 1.92 million in 2020 and 740,000 in 2021, explained the official. "With Seoul Festa 2022, however, we look forward to kick-starting Korea's tourism industry and boosting the city to become one of the top 5 global cities."