Korean culture comes to Burnaby
Korean Cultural Heritage Festival Saturday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. | Swangard Stadium, Burnaby Tickets and info: koreanfestival.ca
A year after its rebirth as a large-scale community event at Burnaby’s Swangard Stadium, the annual Korean Cultural Heritage Festival returns to the stadium on Saturday for its 14th edition.
The event will again feature Korean cuisine, traditional tightrope-walking performances known as jultagi, a Korean pop music competition and a taekwondo performance from athletes representing the Kukkiwon, the South Korean governing agency for the sport. The festival has been held annually in locations mostly in Coquitlam, but organizers last year brought the event back to Swangard to draw more mainstream presence. Mike Suk, a spokesman and a key organizer of the festival, said the event drew close to 27,000 last year, with at least 40 per cent of those from outside the traditional Korean-Canadian community.
Suk said organizers aim for the same numbers as last year, despite competition from a number of other events on Saturday.
“If we do our job, I think people will come out and support us again,” he said.
“What we are trying to do is to showcase culturally what makes Canada beautiful,” he said, noting the festival is symbolic of B.C.’s diverse society. “It’s a true testament of how multicultural Metro Vancouver is. I don’t think there’s a community quite like ours anywhere else.”
The festival is free, but organizers are introducing a ticketing system where people can download free tickets at koreanfestival.ca. This allows organizers to conduct a raffle draw for attendees: The top prize will be a round-trip flight to Korea, sponsored by Korean Air.
Before the move back to Burnaby, the event regularly drew mostly members of the local Korean community, Suk said. But he added it was crucial for the festival to reach across cultural lines, because many Korean-Canadians like himself were raised as Canadians and represent the new wave of Metro Vancouverites who must make their contributions to the community.
“We have 200-plus volunteers who meet every week, unpaid, to plan events,” he said. “Some of them are still students, who have to balance their education and their volunteer work. They are making the effort because we all share a common goal: We want to do some good in the community. And last year shows that hard work, passion and perseverance pay off.”
Suk added that as these volunteers grow older, they will become the next generation of organizers for the festival, ensuring that the event evolves with the mainstream and Korean-Canadian community in Metro Vancouver.
The event will also provide a valuable opportunity for grassroots Korean culture to build a bridge to the mainstream, as people from various backgrounds connect over music, dancing and food.