Kaylie Siu
Since its inception in 2023, the UC San Diego Korean Day Festival has lit up Sixth College East Lawn once a year for a lively evening of games, food, music, and dancing. What began as an idea from UCSD Korean Language Program staff has become a highly anticipated event, complete with its own memories and traditions.
As students lined up for K-pop albums, ramen, and games on Monday, Oct. 6, they were met with a live performance by the Korean American Dance Association.
“Every year, we have a different program,” UCSD Transnational Korean Studies program director Jin-kyung Lee said. “So, today, we have the traditional dance and then a modernized version [set to] Gangnam Style. … That’s a little bit of a modernized hybrid version — a fusion dance.”
When Korean Language Program staff began planning the first Korean Day Festival two years ago, they partnered with the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles to help with funding and organizing — a partnership that has sustained to this day. Lee credits the festival’s success to the KCC’s aid and the organizing efforts of lecturer Nancy Yin.
The festival is designed to help students more deeply understand Korean culture within the popular media they already know. After a summer dominated by hit movie “K-Pop Demon Hunters” and its earworm soundtrack, the organizers wanted to include a mix of themed booths and songs from the film. UCSD K-pop dance group KOTX returned to the festival for its second year to give a 10-minute dance workshop to the chorus of “Soda Pop.”
KOTX dance coordinator Jessica Park ran the workshop and said the club’s average attendance has more than doubled this quarter.
“I feel like [K-pop has] gotten a lot of people into the music, and through the music, they got into the culture,” she said.
K-pop is just a small fraction of the elements of Korean culture the festival honors. Lee hopes this event will continue inspiring students of all backgrounds to engage more deeply with various facets of Korean culture.
One of the festival’s most popular activities was the hanbok table, where students could try on traditional Korean clothing. Professor Hyejin Cho, who runs the hanbok table, described the significance of the hanbok styles they chose to bring this year.
“We are promoting Korean culture, and we are also promoting the Korean study and Korean language class under [the Korean Language Program],” she said. “Since the ‘K-Pop Demon Hunters’ [was] a huge feat, we want to introduce the gat that Saja Boys wear — something traditional — [and] the proper name of the hanbok, Korean traditional attire.”
Other tables at the festival tied in both modern Korean pop culture and older cultural practices. One table taught students how to play the traditional games in the popular Korean show “Squid Game.”
By learning about Korean and Korean-American culture, Lee hopes that Korean Language Program students will gain a better understanding of the language they are learning. Lee explained that this connection between language and culture is essential for these students, as well as others trying to learn a new language.
“I teach culture; when you learn a language, you have to learn about the culture,” she said. “You learn about the culture through language and vice versa; they’re inextricable.”