The Grateful Camp reimagines what music festivals can be

People enjoy a performance at The Grateful Camp 2025 in Sinan, South Jeolla Province, Sept. 6, 2025. Courtesy of The Grateful Camp

As music festivals in Korea continue to grow in size and scale, The Grateful Camp is going a different direction.

The upcoming festival features at least 20 great local acts, including Galaxy Express, Seoul Electric Band, Windy City, Chang Kiha, Tiger Disco, CHS, hathaw9y and Radio Revolution, performing at at Jjangttungeo Beach in Sinan, South Jella Province, from Sept. 4 to 6.

Rather than focusing only on bigger stages and larger lineups, The Grateful Camp aims to create a temporary world where music, nature and people come together. For the team behind the festival, the most important part is not what happens on stage, but what happens between people.

The festival began in 2020, when tropical psychedelic groove band CHS held a small performance at a campsite in a forest in Gapyeong County, northeastern Gyeonggi Province. Surrounded by nature and a ree-spirited audience, the experience became the foundation of what The Grateful Camp wanted to create.

People gather at The Grateful Camp 2025 in Sinan, South Jeolla Province, Sept. 6, 2025. Courtesy of The Grateful Camp

Ahead of its next chapter, Kim Se-hoon, executive director of The Grateful Camp, spoke about the festival’s origins, philosophy and why creating a meaningful experience matters more than simply growing bigger.

Q. What made you want to create your own festival?

At some point, many festivals in Korea started to feel similar. The lineups and atmosphere seemed to move in the same direction.

So we started asking ourselves: What if there was a festival filled only with the things we truly love?

We wanted to create a few days each year where we could focus only on things that genuinely make us happy.

People watch a performance in the woods during The Grateful Camp 2025 in Sinan, South Jeolla Province, Sept. 6, 2025. Courtesy of The Grateful Camp

Q. Beyond music, what does a festival mean to you?

For us, music is closer to a tool rather than a purpose.

Of course, we cannot explain The Grateful Camp without music, but this festival does not exist simply to show performances.

I often compare The Grateful Camp to an open-world game. We prepare the environment and the structure, but what happens inside that world is created by the audience.

We create the space, but the main characters should always be the people who enter it.

People decorating their campsites, choosing their outfits, bringing flags and creating their own moments. Those people complete the festival.

A campfire warms up festivalgoers at The Grateful Camp 2025 in Sinan, South Jeolla Province, Sept. 6, 2025. Courtesy of The Grateful Camp

Q. What makes The Grateful Camp different from other festivals in Korea?

There are many festivals in Korea, but I am not sure if there are as many different experiences.

We do not think we are special. We think we are simply a little different.

The Grateful Camp is a festival where people stay for three days and two nights. Artists, staff and audiences spend that time together and create a community.

Recently, we have started looking at The Grateful Camp less as a “festival” and more as a “journey.”

We hope people do not come only to watch performances, but to experience new relationships and sensations in nature.

A band performs at The Grateful Camp 2025 in Sinan, South Jeolla Province, Sept. 6, 2025. Courtesy of The Grateful Camp

Q. The festival moved from the forest to the sea. What does the ocean represent for The Grateful Camp?

The Grateful Camp originally started in the forest. It was quiet, personal and a place where people could look inward.

Then we arrived at the sea.

For me, the ocean is like a public square in a city. It is a place where everything gathers and separates, where solitude and connection exist together.

The movement from forest to sea feels like a natural process of growth.

Sinan, with its sea, forest and islands, feels like the perfect place for people to let go of themselves and enter new relationships.

People dance together under the light of flares at The Grateful Camp 2025 in Sinan, South Jeolla Province, Sept. 6, 2025. Courtesy of The Grateful Camp

Q. What is the biggest challenge of creating this type of festival in Korea?

The biggest challenge is space.

For the kind of festival we want to create, space is not just a background. It is one of the main elements that creates the experience itself.

Finding the right space every year has not been easy.

Another challenge is financial sustainability. Ticket sales alone cannot maintain the structure, so support programs and partnerships are necessary.

People greet each other at The Grateful Camp 2025 in Sinan, South Jeolla Province, Sept. 6, 2025. Courtesy of The Grateful Camp

Q. How do you make sure the festival does not lose its identity as it grows?

We are careful about quantitative growth.

Instead of choosing the easiest way to become bigger, we want to choose the path that stays closer to our essence.

We believe that quality growth will eventually lead to natural growth in size.

Slowly, but firmly. That is the way we have chosen.

Jjangttungeo Beach hosts The Grateful Camp 2025 in Sinan, South Jeolla Province, Sept. 6, 2025. Courtesy of The Grateful Camp

Q. Was there a moment when you felt, “This is exactly what we wanted to create”?

It was a Saturday night in Yangyang in 2024.

At the beach bar Geukrak, Tiger Disco was playing music and Lim Jae-beom’s “After This Night” was playing.

I was singing and dancing with the staff.

When I looked around, someone was waving a flag, someone was talking beside a campfire and someone was lying on the beach looking at the stars.

Everyone was singing the same song together.

The alcohol had run out that night, and I remember telling (festival operations director Bae) Wook-jin, “We have everything we wanted right here.”

Festivalgoers cool off in the water at The Grateful Camp 2025 in Sinan, South Jeolla Province, Sept. 6, 2025. Courtesy of The Grateful Camp

Q. How does The Grateful Camp make you feel?

Sometimes I go to Geukrak to watch performances. After a few drinks and letting myself move with the music, there are moments when I feel free.

But eventually, I return to the version of myself expected by society.

That is why The Grateful Camp feels special to me. It creates a feeling that “any version of yourself is OK.” Maybe The Grateful Camp is a place where people can reveal who they truly are and where others accept them as they are. When those feelings come together, I believe that is where real freedom begins.

The organizers of The Grateful Camp sit together at a bar, April 13. Courtesy of Léa-Sara

Visit thegratefulcamp.com for more information, or follow @thegratefulcamp on Instagram.

Daniela P. Solano, @ldymacca on Instagram, is a cultural researcher and the founder of Korean Wave Lab, a platform dedicated to promoting Korean underground subcultures.