Oh my… the Korean spring flower festival in Sokcho was now over after 15 years due to declined number of population.
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=369793
Spring flower festival in Sokcho closes amid population decline
by Lee Hae-rin
The cherry blossom festival of Sokcho in Gangwon Province will close 15 years after its establishment due to a lack of workers amid the aging of its residents and a declining population in the region.
Founded in 2009, the festival in Sokcho’s Sangdomun Village had garnered recognition among springtime picnickers here, offering scenic views of the cherry blossom tunnels along the way to Mount Seorak and other nearby regional food-based specialties.
However, the event was canceled in 2019 due to a massive wildfire that wreaked havoc in mountainous towns of Gangwon Province. In addition, it was also suspended from 2020 to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It resumed last year.
Despite its popularity, the annual event has faced operational difficulties as the members of the women’s association of the village, which took the leading roles in preparing for the festival, are now in their 70s and 80s.
This year, the residents have finally decided to abolish the festival due to the lack of young people in the town.
“More than half of the residents have aged to over 65 and it is, unfortunately, no longer possible to hold the festival that receives over 10,000 visitors every year,” the residents said.
According to the city government, the village has a total population of 343 people and 173 of them are now aged over 65.

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    Wow what a shame. That’s an amazing achievement to have that much tourism coming in from the work of such a small committee. It would make sense for a group of younger people to be shipped in to consult with the older residents so the knowledge is not lost and the younger people literally do the heavy lifting.

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      Absolutely. Youngsters from all over the country should be invited to volunteer.

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      It’s a case for whatever regional government department the FL worked for in Destined with You, she was always running around doing things like this.

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        I can’t believe it with the amount of money tourism brings in you would think they would take this to the national tourism department. Considering the high unemployment numbers they could use unemployed with an incentive of additional skills and something for their cv. I am sure they could get sponsorship from conglomerates too. I don’t even live there and think it’s a terrible loss.

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    This is not happening only in SK, in european countries, specially the eastern ones that I know, all the vilages have mostly older population due to the young going to the big cities for college or work. Mostly are older women that have lost their husbands. They are like ghost villages when you pass by them.
    If you take into account what happens in Netherlands, for example, where they are trying to push the farmers out of thier farms fo bs reasons or in USA, where you have billioners like Gates and Bezos buying a lot of farmland, one must wonder why is it all happening. Then you stumble upon this article, it kind of makes you think a tad more when you think of one possible reason besides control of food resources, and why you have bilioners that made their wealth with disregard for everything, including environment issues, pushing this very popular agenda:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/19/business/economy/flannery-california-forever-solano.html

    “The idea would have been treated as a joke if it weren’t backed by a group of Silicon Valley billionaires who included Michael Moritz, the venture capitalist; Reid Hoffman, the investor and co-founder of LinkedIn; and Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of the Emerson Collective and the widow of the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. They and others from the technology world had spent some $900 million on farmland in a demonstration of their dead seriousness about Mr. Sramek’s vision.”

    https://journalrecord.com/2023/04/billionaires-highlight-solid-investment-in-farmland/
    https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/11/30/dutch-farmers-could-be-paid-to-close-their-livestock-farms-under-new-scheme

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      The biggest farm buyouts in the US are food corporations like Cargill consolidating land into mega farms.

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