14 November 2014
The Seoul Lantern Festival is an annual event held during autumn from 7 November 2014 to 23 November 2014. Visitors can see displays of lanterns on the famous Cheonggyecheon Stream in downtown Seoul. During the festival period, hundreds of lanterns, each with a unique design and story, will be lit on each night from 7 PM onwards.
Cheongyecheon is a short walk from our hotel (Ibis Ambassador Myeong-dong) in Myeongdong. We had to dress warmly as the last few days had been hit by a cold front.
Quite many people turned up for this event despite the chill. I guess the locals were used to even worst chill than this. Police crowd control were on site and visitors had to enter and leave the stream via assigned stairs. We chose not to go down to the stream and viewed the lanterns from above so we could take our time and not be ushered along by the crowd controllers.
One of my favourite lantern is the dragon boat lantern. At regular intervals, the sails actually deployed itself and smoke appeared from the mouth of the dragon at the bow of the boat.
When there are crowds, there would be pushcarts selling souvenirs and food.
Cotton candy vendor at the Lantern Festival – a treat for this kid.
The lanterns were displayed in the stretch of stream from Supyogyo to Cheonggye Plaza. Most of the lanterns were depicting something related to Korea’s history or culture or cartoons.
A lantern like a Statue of Liberty in green seems like an oddity.
Lanterns depicting fishes (Salmons?) heading upstream.