The Korea Times
The 31st Plum Festival was held for ten days in March this year in Plum Village on the Seomjin River in Gwangyang County, South Jeolla Province. The festival was held on the side of a mountain among blossoming plum flowers and traditional tile-roofed houses. Travelers visited the festival to observe the beautiful flowers that are messengers of spring, as well as the wide, open views of the Seomjin River. The number of tourists who came exceeded one million during a single month. Beginning in the mid 1990s, for its first three years, the festival was hosted by the owner of the 40-acre plum field, Hong Ssang-ri. Her father-in-law, who had earned his fortune in Japan, bought the field and planted chestnut trees and plum trees there. In the late 1960s, Hong persuaded her father-in-law to dig up the chestnut trees and plant more plum trees. He accepted her suggestion. In the early 1970s when she was in her late twenties, she developed a life-threatening condition that requires surgery. As a result her husband and elder brother-in-law fell into debt and entered the mining industry. To repay he
Go to News Site