Lincoln Peterson

I went to the first “Red Oden” festival in Jecheon!

This festival ran from the February 28 to March 3rd. You can come to taste Jecheon’s famous “Red oden,” which is like a fish cake with spicy sauce. You can see the festival as soon as you get out of the station.

It’s more spicy than I expected, so I recommend bringing some water or beer to eat together. Although it was mostly red oden, there were other foods as well such as pigs feet (jeokbal/족발), korean buckwheat pancakes (memilcheon, 메밀전), blood sausage (sundae/순대), and korean chicken nuggets (dalk kangjeong/닭강정)

We had some beer, red oden, noodles, and korean chicken nuggets. The red oden was the best. But the noodles were really bad… haha..

There was also a perfomance by a trot singer named Kim Dana. Everyone seemed like they were having a lot of fun, and the dancers were funny.

If you are a foreigner, the locals will be very interested in you. They are very excited that an American is trying the red oden. I am used to it, but it was much more intense here compared to the countrysides in Gyeonggi-do. I don’t think any foreigners come here.

When the local news came, they pointed the camera at me. There were many tables they could choose from, but they wanted to shoot me. But my friend was shy, so I don’t think they used the footage, haha…

Jecheon is also famous for traditional medicine, so they have an herb market. Maybe it’s because of the festival, but there was nobody at the herb market… I think the city pays to keep the herb market open for tourists. If you can speak some Korean, I would recommend going to support tourism in the city.

That’s all. See you next time.