Busan Mackerel Festival

About the festival

The Busan Mackerel Festival has been held every October since 2008 at Songdo Beach, Korea's first public beach and a popular hot place with attractions such as the Songdo Yonggung Cloud Bridge, the Songdo Cloud Walkway and the Songdo Marine Cable Car. Taking advantage of the region's characteristics, home to the large purse seine fisheries cooperative that catches about 90% of the mackerel from coastal waters and the Busan Joint Fish Market that handles 80% of the nation's mackerel, it was planned to create synergy for regional economic revitalization and tourism development by turning the festival into a tourism product linked to food, culture and the arts, and tourism resources. With the "national fish" mackerel as its theme, it is planned, participated in and promoted together by fishery stakeholders and local residents, and its reputation is growing as a culture and arts festival with things to see and do, not merely a food festival, and as Korea's representative fisheries culture festival that fosters and develops fishery-related industries. It offers domestic and international tourists a distinctive festival experience through unique and fresh experience, tour, exhibition, contest and performance programs, including its signature programs such as a field experience at the Busan Joint Fish Market, bare-handed mackerel catching, a surprise mackerel auction, finding mackerel by kayak, a mackerel paper boat race, a direct-sales seafood market and a mackerel food market.