▲ Photo by Global Jeju Times Team

[This article is written by a JDC Junior Journalist. The JDC Junior Journalist program is an educational project sponsored by Jeju Free International City Development Corporation (JDC). JDC Junior Journalist articles are only briefly edited by mentors before publishing.]

The Tamna Culture Festival was first opend in 1962, but it had different name in that time. The name was the Jeju Art Festival. The 52nd Tamna Culture Festival was open from October 2nd to October 6th in the Tapdong Plaza. The festival included many booths and events that aimed to inform the public about the culture of not only Jeju-do, but other cultures, too . This festival was opened to let visitors exprience the Tamna culture.

And the main event of the festival was 5 programs of Jeju dialect, one of which was the Jeju Dialect Poetry Reading Contest. Jang hee jin, a contestant from Baerok Elementary School, was the first participant in the contest. She said, “I am from Seoul and nobody in family speaks Jeju dialect, so it was really hard for me. But this contest allowed me to learn about a lot about Jeju and the Jeju dialect.”

This Festival has been going on for 50 years, and there’s a certain reason why this festival has endured. Ko kyung su, a scholarship professor at the Jeju Education center said, “This festival first began in order to bring to light Jeju’s culture. However, these days students are only focusing on testing, and they suffer for it. They don’t know how to have fun. Furthermore, old people like me learned first hand about traditional culture, but young people are learning less about their traditional culture and more about international culture. I just want young people to learn about their traditional culture.” He also said “ If I had to sum up the Tamna Culture Festival in few words, I’d say, ‘A festival which represents Jeju-do.’”

One booth was named ‘The Island of the Myth: Crete comes to Tamna’ . The organizer of the booth was Nicholas John. He is the owner of the Greek Museum. He said, “Crete and Jeju-do have many things in common. First of all, Crete is in the south of the Greece and is laid out from east to west like Jeju-do. Secondly, people in Crete recognize their own identity as islanders and also have their own dialect like people of Jeju-do. Lastly, Crete and Jeju-do are the hometowns of Myth and lore.”

People from Jeju-do participated in the festival, and people learned about Jeju culture by participating in the contests and the booths. If people keep participating in the festival, it may help raise Jeju-do’s international profile, and may be the best short-cut to know Jeju-do.