Gumi city, raising a new green wind with ’Korea Saemaeul Expo’
▶ Sep.19 ~ 23, 2009, Park Chunghee Gymnasium and Civic Stadium
▶ With the pride of Saemaeul restoration, Gumi will heat up the Saemaeul spirit for 5 days
▶ The proud of green consciousness, green life, and green growth
▶ A hopeful festival of sharing and harmony by seeing, feeling, and enjoying everything about Saemaeul
▶ Swift moves for the convenience of audiences to improve the image of Gumi
Gumi city is to host ’Korea Saemaeul Expo’ in line with diversified projects including the project for globalization, a new leap of the Saemaeul Movement as the center for Saemaeul Movement restoration.
The Expo is held by the Korea Saemaeul Movement Center and North Gyeongsang Province and hosted by Gumi City for 5 days from September 19 to 23 in the Park Chunghee Gymnasium and Civic Stadium.
Under the theme of ’Saemaeul, a hope that makes better tomorrow,’ the Expo encompasses the opening ceremony and other official events; 9 exhibition halls including Saemaeul History Zone, Hope Saemaeul Zone, and Saemaeul Luxury Hall; accessory events such as Saemaeul thrift plaza, city-farm win-win site, and Korea walk-of-hope parade; and more than 30 diverse programs including Saemaeul playground, environment-friendly play experience, a Saemaeul opera, a Saemaeul yard play, and other cultural events.
Notably, given the age of green growth, the Expo will be a carbon neural occasion. The main place of the Expo, Park Chunghee Gymnasium, has been named ’Hope Stump,’ and the Civic Stadium has been named ’Cooperation Forest’ for a green effect.
The Expo is to re-establish the Saemaeul Movement campaign, which was the cornerstone to raise Korea up to one of the world’s 10 economic powers, as a modern version of green consciousness and life, and ultimately to let the world know that North Gyeongsang Province and Gumi City are the fields for green growth in this age.
* Green Hope Festival
The city has set up a strategy to derive spirits of sharing and harmony among people from the Expo by making it a ’Green Hope Festival’ and prepared accordingly.
The city is to host an international academic symposium attended by 35 famous scholars from 30 countries so that the spirits of the Saemaeul Movement (diligence, self-reliance, and cooperation) will turn into a living revolution, advanced consciousness, community movement, and worldwide spiritual and cultural movement as part of measures to share theories and practices.
To raise the memories of er president Park Chunghee and nostalgia from those days and to build the Expo as a festival of grandiose unification of the nation through ‘participation, sharing, understanding, and sympathy,’ the existing facilities including the birth place of Park Chunghee will be used to a maximal extent, while a variety of experience events like boiled barley, straw arts, and classes of memory are organized.
* Diverse measures for success
Approximately 300,000 visitors from Korea and abroad are expected to visit and the city will try to be fully prepared to provide the best services for visitors with convenient facilities, 4 shuttle bus routes and 10 parking lots accommodating up to 4,000 cars.
Further, a total of 2,200-plus Purumi citizen volunteers will take care of translation, transportation, and ination. Additionally, 441 daily volunteers will help with the environment, while Saemaeul leaders will join to support the Expo.
To attract more visitors to Saemaeul Expo, PR envoys met with local autonomous governments and Saemaeul centers throughout the country; sent letters to the heads of each autonomous government, institutions, organizations, schools, and private communities in Seoul; and visited subway and railway stations, bus terminals, and other multi-use facilities. They also visited the home pages of every type of institution in the country to promote the event.
In addition, Gumi City, waging the ’campaign for planting Ten million trees’ to change into a green and environment-friendly city, is improving its image further as a beautiful city by tidying up the streets with streetlight flower pots, flower towers, flower walls, street flower beds, and flower paths.
Mayor Nam Yoo Chin said, 400,000 Gumi citizens are to unite with pride as the center for Saemaeul restoration so that the 1st Korea Saemaeul Expo will prove to be a successful and historic Saemaeul festival and the Saemaeul Movement will lead the future of Korea. He was also assured that Gumi City would become the origin of a green wind.
The city has put such activities into practice as Saemaeul cleanup and thrifty flea market with a view to saving, sharing, exchanging, and re-using based on the pride as the center for Saemaeul Movement restoration.
Also, the city has been leading the global project to export and spread the advantages of the Saemaeul Movement to developing countries such as Vietnam, China, Mongolia, East Timor, Congo, and Nepal.
* What is the Saemaeul Movement?
The Saemaeul Movement was a national campaign for the psychological and economic boost of the Korean people when they were in extreme destitution. It was based on the spirits of diligence, self-reliance, and cooperation. It is chosen as the top-most significant achievement in Korean history from several public opinion polls.
※ Saemaeul Movement (40.2%) – Seoul Olympic Games (30.1%) – 5-year Economic Development Plan (29.9%) – Gyeongbu Expressway (18.8%) – 2002 World Cup Soccer Match (15.1%)
The Saemaeul Movement partly represented Korea’s authentic traditional spiritual cultural activities such as Gye, Hyangyak, Poomasi, and Doole, and it laid a foundation for Korea’s growth into the Miracle on the Han River, OECD membership, and becoming one of the world’s 10 economic super powers.
As the original and native social and national campaign, the Saemaeul Movement has driven the modernization of Korea, in which sense it is worth preserving and passing on to future generations as a pure private autonomous campaign.
