Taste Korea’s best rice at Icheon festival

Icheon in Gyeonggi Province, famous for producing high-quality rice, is holding a rice festival this month to celebrate the harvest.

The city will hold its 14th rice festival from Oct. 25-28 and offers a variety of activities related to rice and Korean agricultural traditions and customs.

Korea’s traditional activities and performances held during the harvest season in the old days will be recreated to celebrate the successful harvest season this year despite frequent typhoons and rains this summer.

Six themed sites will offer hands-on experiences for children and families, where they can participate in traditional entertainment activities and experience old ways of farming, traditional weddings and many other events.

The highlight of the festival is rice cooking event. Rice for 2,000 servings will be cooked in a huge iron cauldron. A bowl of rice will be served with kimchi and Korean red pepper paste gochujang. 

It is the most popular event every year, drawing a huge crowd waiting in line to receive tickets for a bowl of fluffy, fragrant sticky rice.

Another popular event is the rice cooking competition which selects a master rice cook on the last day of the festival. A group of rice experts and culinary professors will judge based on taste, cooking technique and procedures and even the cook’s attitude.

The festival will also feature an international food competition that will offer a variety of traditional dishes of many countries around the world, all cooked with Icheon rice.

Another special event will bring together visitors from different regions as they work together to pull out a 600-meter-long rice cake while trying not to break it in between.

What draws hundreds of rice aficionados to the festival every year?

Rice experts say the long hours of sunshine, large temperature difference between morning and evening hours and clean water produce the best quality rice in the country.

“Icheon has several geographical advantages in producing rice. The longest hours of sunshine and the biggest temperature difference between morning and evening make nutrient-rich rice. As the Icheon region has plenty of underground water, it has never worried farmers about droughts,” said Yoo Sang-gyu, director of Icheon-si Agricultural Technology Service Center, which studies agriculture products and cultivation techniques.

The center manages the quality and taste of Icheon rice scientifically by evaluating soil and water to guarantee consistent taste year after year. It developed a rice cultivation manual so that rice grown by different farmers can have uniform taste and quality.

Icheon rice is long known as the country’s best, as it was reserved for kings in the old days.

Now anyone can find Icheon rice at supermarkets nationwide as well as overseas. About 60 tons of the rice are exported to Hong Kong every year.

By Lee Woo-young  (wylee@heraldcorp.com)