Birth of
Boryeong Mud
and Origin of
mud festival
Daecheon beach had been recognized as dirty sea by its mud until early 1990s and as a beach in crisis that was avoided by tourists because of exorbitant price to the poin of the words "Live a year with income for a month". Moreover, local economy was at serious risk since a coal mine of Boryeong was closed off by the governemnt's coal industry rationalization.
When Park Sang-don was a mayor of Daecheon (it was divdied into Boryeong-gun and Daecheon-si at that time), he was considering of what to do for promoting Boryeong economy and paved the way of this business suggesting devlopment of mud ppack cosmetics as a key tour product by using mud around Daecheon beach to the relevant cosmetic company after he saw people were dating out with mud all over their bodies from a movie on TV.
Mayor Park Sang-don found out an article where superiority of Boryeong mud was reported as the best in 'Research on mud ingredient of main beaches in Korea' of research articles related to mud by a professor of pharmacy school in Wonkwang University, Kim Jae-baek and determined harmlessness of Boryeong mud through commissioning KRICT and the leading cosmetic company, Pacific Ocean about ingredients. They started to promote to general beach vacationers with a mud experience center, 「Daecheon Natural Mud Masage House」 of Daecheon beach from July, 1994 and it was very effective in a way that participants were mainly foreigners though it was a smaller event compared to Boryeong mud festival today.
Boryeong mud highly atracted people after various media reported it in addition to this successful event and on September, 1955, Boryeong mud pack business achieved a huge consequence as it received the grand prize from Korea National Business Competition held by tthe Ministry of Home Affairs (Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs now) to promote management mind of local economy. Based on this, when Kim Hak-hyun was assigned as the first mayor of popular election on July, 1995, he developed 8 types of mud cosmetic from 1996 to 1997 to promote 'mud business by using natural ocean mud of Boryeong' but the sale stalled by little awareness.
Meanwhile Boryeong-si was conducting 5 festivals in 1997 (Crab festival, Manse Boryeong cultural festival, Hannae crossing Doldari, Cheonbuk oyster festival, Daecheon beach cultural festival), a professor Jung Kang-hwan of Paichai University as Culture and Tourism department of Boryeong-si ordered 'research sevice on improvement plan for Manse Boryeong cultural festival'. He was the first one to propose on a mud festival with a specialized subject of a festival in 1998 to change Manse Boryeong cultural festival from local resident-oriented way to attrcting tourists and change a form of the festival into designation as a cultural tour festival and a representative tour festival of Chungcheongnam-do.
Professor Jung's research service resulted in holding a new cultural tour typed festival with expense of Boryeong-si rather than changing a resident uniting typed festival of Manse Boryeong cultural festival. The first Boryeong mud festival was conducted to promote mud cosmetics based on the proposed mud experience programs for 4 days from July 16th, 1998 at Daecheon beach and it achieved a huge outcome.
Professor Jung was a jury of a cultural tour festival of culture and tourism department and contributed for mud festival to be selected as a cultural tour festival by appealing its potential to the government, giving it an opportunity to be a national festival from the starting point. Therefore, he received an honorary citizenship of Boryeong-si in 2002 as his contribution to plan and develop Boryeong mud festival was appreciated.
Boryeong mud festival has been developed to be the best festival in Korea through consistent passion and efforts by public officials concerned and civilian volunteers and it was designated by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, thus making global Boryeong mud festival of today.
2010's
History of Boryeong Mud
2000's
History of Boryeong Mud
We invite you to the largest summer festival in the world
where everyone enjoys being one.