Changwon Special City, "Captivated by Fragrance and Enchanted by Taste" ... Changwon Food Culture Festival Held

Changwon Special City in Gyeongnam announced that the "9th Changwon Food Culture Festival" was successfully held on the 18th at Changwon Yongji Cultural Park.

The 9th Changwon Food Culture Festival.

The Changwon Food Culture Festival is hosted by Changwon City and organized by the Changwon Food Culture Festival Promotion Committee. It was prepared to promote the diversity and excellence of Changwon’s food culture through a national cooking contest, food culture exhibition hall, experience and tasting booths, and promotion and sales booths.

The 9th Changwon Food Culture Festival decorated the venue with chrysanthemums, the representative flower of Changwon City, and presented a monkfish bibimbap performance using monkfish, a local specialty of Changwon, to the citizens.

Additionally, the festival operated experience and tasting booths offering representative dishes and local specialty desserts, cake making, persimmon kimchi and persimmon gochujang (red chili paste) making, sandwich making, and rice cake making. Promotion and sales booths featured big brands and food manufacturing and processing companies, providing visitors with content they could directly experience and enjoy.

The monkfish bibimbap performance using the local specialty monkfish, tasting of monkfish corn rice and monkfish gangjeong based on Changwon’s representative dish monkfish jjim, and the diverse food culture exhibition hall widely promoted the excellence of Changwon’s food culture and offered opportunities to taste it, while actively promoting local specialties produced in the Changwon area.

In the national cooking and cake & dessert contest prepared to develop Changwon’s representative dishes and dining products, 18 teams that passed the preliminary round competed. Nine teams received awards and prize money, including the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Award and the Minister of Food and Drug Safety Award, for developing creative and marketable dishes using Changwon’s local specialties.

Changwon City prioritized safety so that citizens could enjoy the festival securely by conducting pre-event safety inspections of facilities, adding K-class fire extinguishers, and deploying professional safety personnel. Furthermore, the festival practiced eco-friendliness by reducing single-use items through the use of monkfish corn rice served in ice cream cones, reusable containers and portable spoons, and reusable cups.

Mayor Hong Nam-pyo said, “This festival created a true venue for citizens to enjoy and promoted Changwon’s representative dishes and excellent food products, providing an opportunity to revitalize the local economy. We will continue to strive for the development of outstanding food culture projects.”