This weekend was another overnight trip to the town of Suwon, just an hour south of Seoul by train. Technically Suwon is Gyeonggi-do province but is connected to the Seoul metro so is an outer suburb commuter city. Suwon is famous for the folk village theme park where many dramas and movies are filmed, and the Suwon fortress which is probably koreas largest fortress and a Unesco listed sited.

I had visited both before briefly during chuseok 2010 when I first arrived in Korea . This weekend was the annual Suwon fortress festival which would have many costumed performances, battle re-anactments, and a large military street parade. Four of us headed down from Daegu for this weekends events.

If you are not taking the metro from Seoul, the high speed KTX line from Busan thru Daegu also stops at Suwon. Unfortunately, only four trains actually make the stop in Suwon while the rest are express to Seoul. Due to this I bought my ticket more than a week ahead to make sure I'd have a seat. Ticket was 29,000w ($26) one way. The train ride from Daegu was 2 hours, although the others chose to take the cheaper more frequent commuter train which took 3.5 hours.

From Suwon train station we walked 20 minutes over to where the fortress gate is. The Suwon fortress takes a large portion of the city centre. The fortress wall has a perimiter ring of 5.7km and in surprisingly all intact for its size and age. At various points along the gate are watchtowers and entrance gates into the inner city . At the heart of the interior is a royal palace with a giant gold buddha statue on the hill behind overlooking. A river runs thru the middle of the fortress from each end.

As we neared the fortress the streets were already lined up for the parade route. Keeping people entertained while they waited for the parade were various street acts. There were K-Pop dancers, Korean Bellydancers, and a BMX bike stunts show. In the distance we could hear the parade coming as the police cleared people off the streets. The parade would come from the north end of the city, thru the fortress north gate, run down the centre of the fortress, and out the south gate into downtown Suwon

The parade began with lots of people in traditional korean dress banging drums and blowing trumpets. There were then hundreds of coloured costumed participants representing different classes of officials and noblemen. This was followed by soldiers on horses and more people in traditional dress .

Video : Royal Parade - Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ96hgXeDMQ

The parade seemed to go on for quite a long time. Like the Buyeo parades the weekend before, it seems like all the local high school kids had been enlised to dress up in costume to swell the ranks. Some of them seemed unusually tall and I think there were lifts in their boots to give them extra height.

To many cheers from the onlookers, there was a group of foreigners dressed in traditional korean costumes as part of the parade. This was actually a large group of at least 50 western participants. I was somewhat envious and wondered how they found out and were asked to participate and might look into this for next years event.

Video : Royal Parade - Part II with Foreigners
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXLpiot7Stw

This made up the tail end of the parade which was a relief as it was quite long and kept going on for a long time . We then wandered up the main north south street of the fortress to the fortress centre. Everyone was still lining the streets and not moving so we thought there must be a second parade coming. I know there was a royal parade and citizens parade but didnt know if they were the same day or one saturday, one sunday.

Since nobody was moving we decided to wait and see what happens. Again, to keep people entertained waiting for the parade the had street performers again. This time it was a female dance group. First they did a traditional fan dance, then a drumming performance. Then the police cleared the street again as the next parade could be seen in the distance.

This was the Citizens Parade and the announcers said there were 1500 participants. First there was a marching brass band followed by drummers. After that it was a multicultural parade of various nationalities of Suwon. They had Thailand, China, Japan, Indonesia in many colourful dresses . Some of them were doing their own traditional dances.

Video : Multicultural Parade
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBTACW-e8FY

Like the first parade, this one seemed to keep going and going. It seems like they had everything but the kitchen sink in this parade. There were cyclists, city workers, and interesting home made vehicles. Then there was a group of racing cars and motorbikes. They reved their engines and shot off in a cloud of smoke.

Video : Citizens Parade - Part I : Racing Cars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu4hzB3D0pI

Some of the participants were quite bizzare such as employees of the local homeplus grocery store or samsung employees. At the start of each group were smartly dressed Korean Air or Asiana Airlines stewardesses holding up banners announcing each group. There were also childrens story characters and other costume animals .

Video : Citizens Parade - Part II 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suqk1dFQ7Ac

This was a very fun parade but very long. Part Circus parade, part carnival, I read there were over 5000 participants. This is definately the biggest one I have seen or known of in Korea. I dont know if it holds the Guinness world record and I wouldnt be surprised.

The rest of the days events will be in the next entry as too many pics in this one...