Jinju Lantern Festival

     This past weekend I attended the Jinju Lantern Festival. The tradition of floating lanterns on Namgang River in Jinju City dates back to the 1592 Japanese invasion of Korea. In October 1592, during a battle between Japanese and Korean soldiers around Jinju Fortress, Jinju people flew lanterns high up in the sky as a military signal and communication tool with soldiers outside the fortress, while floating lanterns and torches along Namgang River. Sadly, most of this information I learned after attending the festival.
   We left Seoul around 7 a.m and we were on the bus for about 3.5 hours. It was a very long day because I couldn't sleep the night before and we were stuck in Jinju until 2 am. This meant that I would be getting back home to Suwon around 7 a.m the next day. We got to the festival very early so we had a lot of time to kill since most of the festivities were at night.  We spent most of the time wandering around and exploring the area near Jinju. We walked some of Jinju fortress and took a lot of pictures with the lanterns. The lanterns were all so ornate and it must have taken weeks to make them. I also went to the Jinju National Museum, which had a lot of history and information about Jinju's involvement during the Japanese invasion. Luckily most of the exhibits were in English.
   One Korean man told my friend that this is the largest festival in Korea. Jinju has a population of 300,000 people. However on average 3 million people attend the ten day long festival. I am very happy to have been one of the 3 million.

  I love this last video. This is why you beware of ajummas!