Annyong he, this is Yomoken
※Annyong he means good bye in Korean, one of the few words we learnt in Korean.
This is a report of the famous Arirang Festival.
※ For those of you who are not aware of it, the Arirang Festival is a massive festival that do mass games and make human letters.
The Arirang Festival goes on for 2 months. Did you know about it?
I thought it takes place once a year on some kind of Memorial Day, for the general secretary to come out in front of the people.
But that is not the case. During the 2 months it takes place around 3 times a week and is always included in the schedule of foreigners visiting the country.
Maybe you could just say that foreigners come to DPRK to see the festival.
Some say that it is a government policy for acquisition of foreign currency, but there are not THAT many foreigners visiting as for it to be called as a policy. (from my instinct, there was about 100 foreigners on that day)
The venue is May Day Stadium, a sporting complex.
Not the Kim Yong-il Stadium which the World Cup Qualifier match was held at.
By the way there are heaps of local DPKR citizens attending as spectators.
Apparently there are many visiting from cities far away
Us foreigners are considers as VIP so we can enter without lining up in the row.
And the admission fee we paid was∙∙∙
100 Euros!!!
Still 2nd class ticket. Soccer wise category 2.
There are 4 tiers for tickets and go from low priced to expensive,
3rd class seat=80 Euros
2nd class seat=100 Euros
1st class seat=150 Euros
VIP seat=300 Euros
※Basically, all sales against foreigners in DPRK are done in Euros
Such expensive admission prices, you actually may be able to call it a policy for acquisition of foreign currency. ww
Locals did not have such nice tickets like us, just tickets made with cheap thin paper. The price must be extremely low.
The seats with a table in green in the back are VIP seats, not much difference.
While we were waiting the human letter makers team entered the back stands
The back stands are filled with people.
They are students. They look white because they are holding white panels for making the human letters.
Closing up on the picture above, this is how it looks.
People are lined up neatly and even the aisles are occupied. Against fire and safety laws?
When they flip there panels after the signal from the main stands, large human letters appear.
No words needed from here, enjoy with pictures and videos.
The leader’s portrait is made with human letters.
Light is shown above the human letters
The number of people dancing on the field is massive.
Children take part as well.
This many when they gather.
In fact, 120000 people take part in one Arirang festival.
It reminded me of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics last year.It is like doing that once every 2 days.
Some day in the future if the Olympics are held in North Korea or the reunited Goryeo Republic, the opening ceremonies of that would be massive as well.
Now, it is not much but we have made a video from our coverage of the Arirang festival so see it here.
A 3 night , 4 day tour entered by land from China. Just that and the expense of 100000 yen. Plus that, you must pay a minimum of 80 Euros to watch the show. But it was an 80 minute show well worth paying for.
It made me hope that a day comes when the festival becomes more easy to access for everyone.
I think it is a tourist attraction that can attract a huge numbers.
In the end, when we were exiting the stadium, we bumped in to performers who were just dancing a while ago.
All of them were still in a excited state and even were waving to us foreigners.
I left the venue felling that I truly want to visit this again sometime in the future.
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