▲ Displaced Persons nationwide 'Hometown of Hearts' Sokchosi, '2024 Displaced Persons Culture Festival' will be held

Sokcho City and the Sokcho Culture and Tourism Foundation announced that they will hold the "2024 Festival of Displaced Persons" under the theme of "Song of Hometown, Food of Sokcho, Our Wind" in the grass square of Sokcho Expo for three days from the 14th to the 16th.

Marking its eighth anniversary this year, the "2024 Displaced Persons Culture Festival" will set up the main stage at the Sokcho Expo Grass Plaza, which is accessible and pleasant for citizens and tourists, and will hold linked events at the sea near Manghyang Park in Cheongho-dong and Jodo Island.

As an official event, the Joint Retreat Festival, the Hamsang Memorial Festival, and the opening and closing ceremonies will be held, and the main event will include the theme performance "Musical Gala Concert Sea Boat," the displaced Culture and Arts Hanmadang, the historical drama of memories, the national Ibuk and Sokcho dialect contest, and the national singing contest for displaced people.

The National Ibuk and Sokcho Dialect Competition, which was introduced for the first time at the Displaced Persons Culture Festival last year, will be selected along with the Displaced Persons Culture Experience Tour for the excellent festival support project in Gangwon-do and will be introduced as a more substantial and fun program.

There are also various hands-on events prepared. There is an Emotional Storytelling Bus Tour where pre-recruited participants can understand and sympathize with the history and culture of displaced people by visiting places such as the Restoration Tower according to the guide, and a play/food experience for displaced people in North and Sokcho where they can taste tofu rice, speed rice cake, and artificial meat rice with North Korean characteristics. Ahn Hye-kyung, a North Korean defector who is active in various fields such as YouTubers, will cook and participate in the event.

The city said, "2024 Displaced Persons Culture Festival," which began as the 1st National North Korean Refugee Culture Festival in 2016 and has established itself as the only festival in the country with the theme of displaced people's culture, is becoming a communication venue that not only the third and fourth generations of displaced people but also the general public by transcending generations and regional limitations.

Every year, a theme street for displaced people's culture held at the displaced people's culture festival will be installed in Cheongcho Lake Park, and members of the Sokcho City Theater Association will perform the lives and culture of displaced people at the time of evacuation.

This year, we added a squid fishing boat experience to further reinforce the attractions and experiences, the city said. "It is expected that both men and women of all ages will be remembered as a pleasant experience by climbing on a real model ship and catching squid."

The "Unification Academic Forum for Displaced Persons," which will be held as a linked event, will be held at 17:00 on the 15th, the second day of the festival, at the Culture Promotion Hall of the Displaced Persons in the venue under the theme of " Sokcho aimed at leading unification and the center of the East Sea." Professor Son Ki-woong, former head of the Korea Institute of Unification, will host the debate, with former Vice Unification Professor Kim Hyung-seok and Professor Lee Sang-cheol of the Department of Social Studies at Ryogoku University in Japan. Unlike the existing forum format, this academic forum is characterized by a more comfortable "talk concert" format.

Singers Hong Jin-young, Hooni-jung, Kang Seok, and Ajaeng Girls will wrap up the three-day displaced people's culture festival and perform a stage that promises next year.

Sokcho Mayor Lee Byung-sun said, "I hope that the 2024 Displaced People's Culture Festival will not only be about remembering and reminiscing the past, but will go one step further and become a driving force for preparing for the next and facing a new tomorrow. We will face the current situation facing the transition period from the first and second generations of displaced people to the third and fourth generations and try to become a place for development and integration that leads to harmony with displaced North Korean defectors in another sense."