The Danoje Festival taking place in Gangneung, venue for the ice sport events should PyeongChang host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, will further promote PyeongChang’s 2014 bid.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) ratified the festival in 2005 as a cultural heritage in recognition that it is an important regional festival with a history of more than 1,000 years.
The event includes a range of traditional music, folk songs, mask drama, oral narrative poetry and other activities. It attracts more than one million local and foreign tourists each year.
The festival will run for the next week and include many colourful events to support PyeongChang’s bid, according to the bid committee.
Kim Jin-sun, Governor of Gangwon Province and Executive President of PyeongChang 2014, who attended the opening ceremony said, “it is appropriate that Gangneung’s rich cultural heritage is now increasingly being shared and enjoyed by visitors from overseas. If our bid to host the 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games is successful, Gangneung will surely continue to develop as an international city with a fine cultural and sporting tradition”.
