A National Heritage Night Tour is being held on Yeonghae Market Street in Yeonghae-myeon, Yeongdeok-gun, North Gyeongsang Province. It is put together as eight 'ya (夜)' programs that open only at night, and visitors walk along the road where the market stood 100 years ago. This street is the site of the March 1 uprising, when manse cries broke out on the Yeonghae market day of March 18, 1919.
The backbone of the night tour is walking. It does not take the method of seating an audience at a single stage, and makes the alleys themselves the route. The program starts from looking at the night scenery and reaches listening to the stories of people of the past and touching something by hand. The National Heritage Night Tour is run on the same eight-axis frame in many regions across the country, but what fills that frame differs street by street.
By day, Yeonghae Market Street is an ordinary small-town shopping row. Afternoon sunlight settles on the low roofs, the whitewashed walls and the cement paving. When the sun goes down and the lights come on, those walls turn into a backdrop.
The demonstration of March 18, 1919, is a case in which the marketplace, a space of daily life, became the stage of resistance just as it was. The reason people gathered that day was that they had come to shop at the market. The night tour chose this street by the same logic.
Events like the night tour have been criticized for turning heritage into a tourism product. The moment lanterns are hung and hands-on booths are set up, the street's own grain can be covered over. Conversely, heritage that people do not walk has its management budget cut first. Yeonghae Market Street is asked to weigh the two.
Opening a street that holds memory at night is a separate matter for local residents as well. Shops have to keep their lights on late, and noise in the alleys increases. The ones who share that burden are, in the end, people of the same neighborhood.
Yeonghae Market Street lies in the middle of the seat of Yeonghae-myeon, Yeongdeok-gun, and the narrow roads connect to one another, so a full round on foot is possible. Yeongdeok-gun provides the detailed schedule and how to take part.
This road is open even when the event is not on. Without buying a ticket, anyone who enters the small town can walk the alleys from beginning to end.
Event information
Venue: Yeonghae Market Street, Yeonghae-myeon, Yeongdeok-gun, North Gyeongsang Province
Program: Eight-part ya (夜) programs
Inquiries: Yeongdeok-gun
