Start 2012 with the Sweet Potato Festival at Yeoju!
(Published December 27, 2011)

– Warm up with roasted sweet potato, kite flying, and sledding –

‘Just what you need during a cold winter – a typical hot and sweet Korean folk snack.’ It’s the season of the sweet potato. The Sweet Potato Festival of Yeoju, Korea’s representative sweet potato production area, has everything you need to know about sweet potatoes.

For four days from December 31^st of 2011 to January 3^rd of 2012, the ‘3^rd Yeoju Sweet Potato Festival’ takes place at the Yeoju-eup, Cheonsong-ri, Silleuksa Temple tour site under the slogan of “Start the New Year at the Yeoju Sweet Potato Festival with winter romance and beautiful memories!”

The Yeoju Sweet Potato Festival is now celebrating its 3^rd anniversary. The festival was first held in 2009 as a gathering of sweet potato agricultural researchers and sweet potato farmers in the Yeoju region. Based on the first event’s success, the festival continues to promote Yeoju sweet potatoes – which are known for their excellent quality and now regarded as a well-being food product – creating pleasant memories for the New Year’s sunrise for tourists and students during the winter vacation.

Yeoju sweet potato roasted in the biggest roasted sweet potato container
For the 3^rd Yeoju Sweet Potato Festival, the largest roasted sweet potato container in Korea was specially built using fire wood. Visitors can enjoy the unique experience of cooking sweet potatoes for 180 people per each session. 

Take this opportunity to treat yourself to plenty of Yeoju chestnut sweet potatoes!
Every day during the festival, visitors can roast chestnut sweet potatoes using a giant roasted sweet potato grill. The chestnut sweet potatoes are given out free to visitors to the festival so they can experience this natural and healthy treat, which was introduced in the recent best-selling book Sweet Potato Revives My Body. 

Diverse experience events with children
Visitors can experience winter folk games including an ice sledding course – which is extremely popular among children – as well as top-spinning games and kite flying. Adults can drift into a sweet nostalgia while children can experience the exciting game culture of Korea. In addition, spontaneous field events are staged including “finding the gold sweet potato”, a three-line poem on sweet potato composition contest, making sweet potato sculptures, and a talent show that is open to visitors.

Diverse exhibition and sales events
Around thirty common varieties of sweet potatoes are exhibited along with sweet potato bud artwork, a rare type of sweet potato, and the king sweet potato. The festival also demonstrates how sweet potatoes are cultivated and promotes the products as well as their beneficial effects. In addition, the sale of various types of sweet potatoes including chestnut sweet potatoes, pumpkin sweet potatoes, and purple sweet potatoes and excellent agricultural products from Yeoju at the festival provides visitors with the opportunity to purchase fresh agricultural goods on site.

In addition, various performance events are held every day during the 3^rd Yeoju Sweet Potato Festival including a celebrity performance, a Korean gypsy performance, and a traditional Korean farmer’s music performance. A singing contest is also staged for festival visitors to participate in on site.

Various sweet potato product markets will sell foods of the festival including goguma muk (jellied sweet potato),goguma sujebi (sweet potato Korea pasta soup), goguma bindaeddeok (sweet potato pancake), goguma dak galbi(spicy grilled chicken with sweet potato), goguma jocheong (sweet potato grain syrup), goguma bbang (sweet potato bread), goguma doughnuts (sweet potato donuts), and goguma mattang (deep-fried sugar glazed sweet potato wedges). In addition, a specialty sales market will sell Yeoju specialty products including agricultural goods and ceramic ware. 

Director Won Sam-hui of the sweet potato festival promotion committee, which supervises the event, said, “Yeoju sweet potatoes have been widely recognized as a health food recently. The event will provide as satisfying a service as possible so that consumers can continue to love the sweet potatoes of Yeoju.”

The Yeoju Sweet Potato Festival offers a harmonious combination of healthy Korean food, things to see, and things to enjoy. It’s a golden opportunity to warm one’s heart this winter and create valuable memories with loved ones. 

For further details, please call the Yeoju Sweet Potato Festival Committee at (+82-31-887-3703, +82-10-8949-4926).

| Yeoju-gun

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