Korea Gig Guide

Summer Festivals Growing

Posted by: mark ˑ  May 5, 2009 – 11:45 am

By Mark

For three years now, Pentaport has been the biggest summer music festival in Korea. Sure, there was the ETP Fest (since 2004) and Summer Breeze (canceled before it began), but Pentaport was the big dog in the yard.

Now, though, there is some real competition shaping up, with the debut of Jisan Valley Rock Festival, featuring Fall Out Boy, Weezer, Patti Smith and more.

But here’s where things get fun. The Jisan Valley Festival is being organized by Yellow 9 Entertainment, the people who used to put on Pentaport (indeed, people have been informally calling the festival “Yellow Fest” for weeks).

Pentaport is held each year the same weekend as the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan, allowing it to “share” artists (July 24-26 this year). Now the Jisan Valley Rock Festival is going to be held on that same weekend, too, forcing the two festivals to fight it out for artists.

Which is a little disappointing. Japan also has the equally big Summer Sonic festival, held two weekends after Fuji Rock. It would make far more sense for one of these two Korean festivals move to the Summer Sonic slot and share those artists…

More importantly, having their shows on separate weekends would not force music fans to choose between the two. Because while Korea’s music scene is growing, it still needs to be nurtured, not divided. I wish both festivals well, but I fear this will not be good for either.

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Oh, forgot to mention, there will be other big concerts, outside of the summer. For example, the Time to Rock festival on May 30. And last year there were several big events in the autumn, like the Grand Mint Festival.