Spring fields, fortress nights: Behind Gochang's festivals

Visitors stroll through fields of young barley in Gochang County, North Jeolla Province, April 19, 2024. Newsis

GOCHANG COUNTY, North Jeolla Province — When the spring wind sweeps across the rolling hills of Gongeum-myeon in Gochang County, nearly 770,000 square meters of green barley sway in unison like ocean waves. This picturesque landscape is drawing visitors from across the country to a county that has mastered the art of turning its rural landscape into a year-round tourism landmark.

Gochang County, home to seven UNESCO designations, anchors its tourism calendar around two vastly different festivals — a spring celebration of grain fields and an autumn homage to a 15th century stone fortress — that altogether draw more than 700,000 visitors a year to a place with a population of less than 60,000.

Barley fields in Gochang County, North Jeolla Province / Courtesy of Korea Tourism Organization

Gochang Green Barley Field Festival

The Gochang Green Barley Field Festival is arguably Korea's most successful example of "landscape farming," turning farmland into scenic tourism spot.

The story of how it began is deceptively simple. Professional photographers started exhibiting their barley field shots at exhibitions around the country, and word spread. Crowds began arriving, eventually growing so large that traffic police had to be deployed to manage the congestion. In 2004, Gochang County launched the festival.

"The Green Barley Field Festival has no special rides or famous food stalls," the Gochang Green Barley Field Festival Committee said. "Its defining characteristic is that it captures the beauty of nature as it is."

At the inaugural fastival, nearly 200,000 people visited in the first month, defying expectations for a rural county.

Canola flower fields at a green barley farm in Gochang, North Jeolla Province, served as the backdrop for Park Bo-gum and IU’s first kiss in the Netflix series “When Life Gives You Tangerines,” making the site a must-visit spot for K-drama fans. Courtesy of Netflix

By 2025, that number of visitors grew to 510,000, a 35 percent jump from 380,000 the previous year. In an era of expensive, spectacle-driven festivals, Gochang pulled it off with a budget of approximately 140 million won ($100,000).

This year, the festival is scheduled for April 18 through May 10.

Yet, there are always colors to enjoy in Gochang. The same field shifts from spring’s green barley and yellow canola flowers to summer’s golden sunflowers and autumn’s soft white buckwheat blossoms, providing returning visitors with a vibrant color wheel.

The spot has also served as a backdrop for popular Netflix drama "When Life Gives You Tangerines" (2025) and several others, including "Goblin" (2016) and "My Dearest" (2023), adding pop culture allure to its scenic appeal.

North Jeolla Province and Gochang County estimated the festival's economic ripple effect at around 35 billion won ($23 million).

Female residents dressed in traditional hanbok take part in "Dapseongnori," the tradition of balancing a stone on one's head and walking the full circuit of the Gochang Eupseong Fortress wall during the Gochang Moyangseong Festival in North Jeolla Province. Courtesy of Korea Tourism Organization

Gochang Moyangseong Festival

When autumn arrives, the focus shifts to stones. Gochang Moyangseong Festival transforms Gochang Eupseong, the best-preserved fortress in Korea, into one of the country's most visited heritage festivals.

The fortress that lends its name to the festival was built in 1453 during the first year of King Danjong's reign, when residents from the area were mobilized to construct the 1,684-meter wall as a defense against Japanese coastal raids. Stone blocks along the wall are still engraved with the names of the participating counties — a rare surviving record of collective labor inscribed directly into the construction materials.

Kang Bok-nam, a Gochang-born cultural heritage guide who has been introducing the site to visitors for years, said the fortress is inseparable from the identity of the people who live beside it.

"Gochang Eupseong is Gochang's talent," she said. "It is a place where our memories live. In the old days, our mothers and fathers would load up large bottles and bring janggu drums and head here for outings — I'd watch them from the classroom window."

This year, the festival is scheduled for Oct. 15 through Oct. 19.

The festival's signature event is "Dapsengnori," the tradition of balancing a stone on one's head and walking the full circuit of the fortress wall. Kang said the practice was never simply folkloric — it was structural engineering by another name.

Participants dressed in colorful traditional hanbok walk on the Gochang Eupseong Fortress wall with stones on their heads during the Moyangseong Festival in North Jeolla Province, Nov. 1, 2025. Courtesy of Gochang County

"The wall is exposed to freezing sea winds in winter. When it thaws, it can come loose," Kang explained. "The stones had to be trampled down to stay firm, the same way barley seedlings need to be pressed back into the earth to grow properly."

She said the tradition of recruiting women for the task began around 1678 and had a practical purpose. "Women in the Joseon era had almost no opportunity to go outside. So they were mobilized for Dapseongnori — it gave them a chance to walk the wall, look out at the world beyond. And to make them do it more than once, the story spread: One lap cures leg ailments, two laps bring good health, three laps bring paradise."

Kang said Dapseongnori was a tradition embedded in childhood memory. "We had to own a school uniform and a hanbok. Dapseongnori was just part of growing up in Gochang."

Hundreds of participants dance in multiple circles during the nighttime Ganggangsullae contest on an outdoor stage in front of Gochang Eupseong Fortress, part of the Moyangseong Festival in North Jeolla Province, Oct. 11, 2024. Courtesy of Gochang County

Now, the festival spans the entire fortress grounds and spills into adjacent streets, featuring Nongak percussion performances and circular dance, called "Ganggangsullae."

The fortress also draws film productions year-round. Its absence of electric poles and modern obstructions makes it an ideal backdrop for Korea's period dramas.

Kang recalled actor Park Bo-gum filming scenes from the drama "Love in the Moonlight" (2016) at the fortress's east gate, a role that Kang credits with making him a household name. "Park Bo-gum found his light in Gochang," she said.

Gochang County's specialty "pungcheon jangeo," grilled freshwater eel / Courtesy of Korea Tourism Organization

On the table: grilled eel

No visit to Gochang is complete without sitting down for "pungcheon jangeo," freshwater eel that has made the region famous.

"Pungcheon" refers to the windy estuary zone where the Incheon River meets the sea near Seonun Temple, where juvenile eels migrating from the Pacific are caught and raised in more than 70 eel farms across the county. Over 30 percent of Korea's national freshwater eel supply comes from the region.

Grilled over charcoal in either salted or seasoned preparation, the eel's firm flesh and high vitamin E content have made it a celebrated stamina-enhancing food since the 1970s, when the first eel restaurants opened near Seonun Temple.

Today, an area known as Pungcheon Eel Street hosts around 40 restaurants, and peak eel season — August through October — draws visitors who pair grilled eel with locally made wild raspberry wine.