As the HyoSeok Cultural Festival is coming up this September, we always recommend travellers to do a little reading about the places that they are planning to visit before going for their trip. Since it is recommended to take a tour around the Lee Hyo Seok Culture Village and Cultural Hall, we gathered up a few things you should know for your convenience!

#1 The Birthplace of Lee Hyo Seok

Lee Hyo Seok (1907-1942) is a famous Korean novelist and the HyoSeok Cultural Festival is held to commemorate him and his popular short story ‘When Buckwheat Flowers Bloom’, one of the most celebrated Korean short stories to date, where the story setting was also build in this village. HyoSeok uses a pen-name ‘Gasan’ for all his stories.

#2 First National Cultural Village

In 1990, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism designated the village as the ‘first national cultural village’ and it comprises of Lee Hyo Seok birth house, a water mill, Chungjujip, Gasan Park, Lee Hyo Seok Memorial Hall, and a buckwheat museum. This village is a popular tourist location during the Autumn as during the height of the blossoming season, visitors can enjoy the beautiful scenery of snow-white fields of buckwheat flowers. They are usually around late August to early September, where it is also generally around the same time where the annual Lee Hyo Seok Cultural Festival is held.

#3 Lee Hyo Seok Memorial Hall

The memorial hall was established in 2002 during the annual HyoSeok Cultural Festival. It was made to further celebrate the literary contributions and display artifacts from the life of HyoSeok.  This hall is also known as the Literary House with an exquisite exterior known as Literary Garden.

Admission fee: Adults 2,000 won/ Middle & High school students 1,500 won/ Elementary school students 1,000 won.

Opening hours: November-April 9am-6pm/ May-October 9am-7pm

#4 Buckwheat Food Street

Buckwheat, also known as memil in Korean, is said to have healing power and it can be used in different dishes such as memil-guksu (buckwheat noodles), memil-muk (buckwheat jelly), memil-buchim (seasoned buckwheat jelly), and memil-kkotsul (buckwheat flower makkolli). BongPyeong is famous for its Buckwheat dishes, hence, the food street is definitely one place you should drop by for a meal.

For more information, visit VisitKorea website.