Busan Mackerel Festival

The Busan Mackerel Festival has been held every October since 2008 at Songdo Beach, Korea's first public beach, which possesses diverse tourism resources such as the Songdo Yonggung Cloud Bridge, Songdo Cloud Walkway, and Songdo Marine Cable Car, and is emerging as a hot place in Korea. It was planned to create a synergy effect for revitalizing the local economy and fostering the tourism industry through the tourism commercialization of the festival linked with food, culture and arts, and tourism resources, utilizing the regional characteristics of being home to the Large-Scale Purse Seine Fisheries Cooperative, which catches about 90% of the mackerel produced in nearby waters, and the Busan Cooperative Fish Market, where 80% of the nation's mackerel volume is traded. With the national fish mackerel as its theme, it is planned and participated in and promoted together by fisheries officials and local residents, and its reputation is growing as not a simple food festival but a cultural and arts festival with things to see and enjoy, and as Korea's representative fisheries cultural festival that fosters and develops fisheries-related industries. It operates unique and novel experience, tour, exhibition, competition, and performance programs, including the representative programs of the Busan Cooperative Fish Market on-site experience, catching mackerel with bare hands, and surprise mackerel auction, as well as kayaking to find mackerel, mackerel paper boat racing, a seafood direct transaction market, and a mackerel food market, providing domestic and foreign tourists with opportunities to enjoy a unique festival.

Program

1. Main Program
- Bare-handed mackerel catching, finding mackerel by kayak, surprise mackerel auction, mackerel paper boat race, Fly! Mackerel Rocket
Performance Program
- Opening Celebration Concert (10.30.): Busan Seo-gu Women's Choir, singers Na Sang-do and Baek Su-jeong, retro mixed band Countdown
- Local Star in Seo-gu (10.31.): participatory performance in which residents such as local clubs and associations take part directly
- Songdo Busking PLAY (10.31.~11.1.): Marionette puppet show busking performance
- Mackerel Hot Stage (11. 1.): performances by youth band Tandanji, Roco Band, and band SORA
- Songdo Youth Night (11. 1.): DJ Mino, a two-member girl group, live performance team Vista
3. Participation Programs
- Busan Cooperative Fish Market on-site experience, mackerel new menu gourmet experience, Songdo Street Dance Contest, mackerel physical challenge, etc.
4. Side Programs
- Mackerel food market, direct fisheries market, Songdo Youth Market, mackerel wish cards, Hope Education & Lifelong Learning Festival, Namhang Bridge Walking Event, Busan Traditional Performance Festival, etc.