K-town festival for 2015 Lunar New Year

The Sydney Korea town Festival Committee celebrates the Lunar New Year by holding an annual korea town festival on Pitt Street.

The public are kept entertained with non stop performances on the center stage from 11 until 6.30 PM, in addition they also have stalls set up along 400 m of Pitt Street where it has been dubbed the korean town due to the ubiquitous korean shops and restaurants in the small area. The big sponsors like Korean Airline, Asiana Airline, Garuda Airline were offering return tickets, with two lucky raffle winners will take home return tickets for Korean Air and Asiana Air, while Garuda Airlines presented return ticket to the winner of this year's K-Factor K-POP competition.

Some of opening performances

Among the performances are the martial art demonstration by Kang I Ho's Tae Kwon Do. The group has been selected to represent NSW in tae kwon do competition. The young group of people breaking wood planks and dancing to Psy's gangnam style certainly added a different flavor to the singing and dancing performances.

Younger performers also entertained the crowds of over a hundred people with modernized korean drums, acappella, smulnori, non-verbal performance, fantasy korea, taekownmoo, music and samulnori. 10 schools ranging from primary to high school participated in this student performance contest.

Aside from many of Korean traditional performances, there are also modern touches like the korean contemporary music performance using janggu (drum) by Deborah Kim titled I have a dream, to rap sessions with Miki, Jimmy Park and NoBrain Bankgroup.

Besides food stalls, the committee also set up games, art and hanbok dressing corner.

The quick art sessions offered are Korean fan painting, Hanji Craft (making a hand mirror), Calligraphy - writing your name in Hangeul and Tak-bon, a grave stone rubbing.

One of the most popular one is the Hanbok (Korean traditional clothe) dress up corner. Single, couple, friends and family alike can choose which color they like and will get to take home a free polariod photo in the end.

Trying out hanbok

The free mini polaroid

More crowds flock to see the highlight of the festival which is the K-factor K-POP competition. This year saw 9 selected entries that passed the video audition. 6 singers and 4 dancing groups compete for the grand prize of a return ticket to Bali, courtesy of Garuda Indonesia.

K-pop dancers compete for the grand prize

Singers entries of the competition

More solo entries

The two MCs were trying to make the atmosphere light with throwing jokes, puns and the female C even twerked with one singer on stage, all the while changing to many different clothes and shoes throughout the competition, just to make things interesting.

The winner of the airfare ticket is a 15 year old singer and dancer from Victoria, while two dance groups took home runner up and second runner up.

 

Although the weather was cloudy for most of the day, it certainly did not dampen the public's enthusiasm in participating actively in the festival.
Besides the korean town festival, the public can also enjoy seeing the Chinese New Year lantern at Tumbalong Park, Darling Harbour, where the Chinese community also set up stalls and stage to welcome the sheep year.

Lastly, happy Chinese New Year!