Anjirang Gopcahng Festival and Daegu Body Painting Festival

Anjirang Gopcahng Festival

It is said that, “There is no sincere love than the love of Food” :) Come on! who doesn’t love food? But when it comes to Korean Food, Daegu is mecca for foodies. This city not only hosts Korea’s biggest Chimec Festival but also proudly hosts Anjirang Gopchang Festival for all the food lovers out there.

About Gopchang: For those of you, who don’t know what Gopchang is, it’s a grilled intestine of pork (sometimes beef) in Korean cuisine. This thing might not be common in your countries and when you first try it, you may not like the taste or the strong smell, but the moment you start eating, you start falling in love with the taste.

About Anjirang: And for those who haven’t heard of Anjirang, then without any doubt, you are either foreigner or not a Daegu resident, because Anjirang is one of the famous eating spots in the city. This alley is full of restaurants offering Gopchang, Pork ribs, Samgyeopsal, Makchang and other delicious cuisines. This place is full of visitors and foodies at evening especially during weekends.

Gopchang Town Festival: Anjiarng Gopchang Festival was held for the first time in 2013 with an aim to attract people from all over the Korea so that they can try this Daegu’s special food. Since then, it is being held every year attracting lots of tourists including foreigners from other countries.

For this year, the festival was held from Aug 25 to Aug 26. Before arriving at the festival, I was thinking it to be a normal food festival, but when I arrived there I was surprised after seeing the great size of this festival. There were so many people selling handicrafts, handmade jewelry items, souvenirs, artworks and paintings -  it was like a small market. They were welcome booth at different entrance gates where you could get your face or hand tattooed for free. The alley was filled with smell of delicious Gopchang and restaurants were jam packed even during the afternoon time.

 Apart from enjoying delicious food, people could also get free souvenirs and even can participate in raffle draw to win huge prizes. One of the best thing that I really want to appreciate is that you could drink water or other drinks for Free – yes absolutely Free for all the visitors.

There was a Kpop concert organized at night on both the days. Although I visited the Anjirang Alley during afternoon, but I saw lots of people coming in great numbers for the festivals and I could imagine that the evening would be more packed with crowd. 

Whether you live in Daegu or some other part of Korea, attending Anjirang Gopchang Festival should be on your bucket list. Anjirang Gopchang Street is so famous as in 2013 it was awarded as one of “Korea’s Top Five Thematic Food Alleys” in South Korea. Not only that, it has also been chosen as “Tour Korea Top 100” by the Korea Tourism Organization in 2015.

Let us know in the comment section that when are you planning to visit the alley and how has been your experience with Gopchang?

Daegu Body Painting Festival

"Art can transform lives. It gives us the power to question, to confront, to explore, and to challenge how we think about the world" - Lucy Llum. Art is commonly known as the last form of magic that exists and considered to have a great impact in our lives. And when it comes to Art, Daegu is home of some of the Korea’s biggest festivals, including Daegu International Musical Festival, Daegu International Opera Festival, Daegu Horror Festival and many others. But if you were to ask me to choose the best one of these festivals – although that would be the most difficult decision I’d have to make – but still I’d go with “Daegu Body Paint Festival”.

Every year, Daegu hosts Korea’s biggest and one of the most splendid festivals of the planet, named as “Daegu Body Paint Festival”, where artists from all over the world compete while showing their specialties and body art skills in different categories. The festival is held for 2 days, where artists work over their masterpiece and paint the models within a given set of time. Contestants are scored by the judges and the qualifiers are given the pass to appear for the final competition on day 2.

One of the coolest things about Daegu Body Paint Festival is that every year, it is held with a unique theme. For 2017, the theme chosen was ‘Fairy Tales’ where artists were to show their skills based on the fairy tale stories they have listened or read in their childhoods.

Before the main stage performances, models are supposed to do cat-walk and pose for the photographs. 

People were extremely happy and amazed by the body artworks and they were talking pictures and selfies with all the models. Apart from body paint competitions, there were also musical performances, fireworks, magic shows and free face painting sessions.

Contestants from more than 10 countries participated this year and attracted thousands of tourists from not only Korea, but also from other countries. 

Daegu Body Paint Festival is held every year in Summer, so if you haven’t been lucky enough to see the festival yet, we hope you will put it on top of your bucket-list of the things to do in Korea. See you there in 2018 :)