The 25th Gwangju International Community Day
Written by the Gwangju International Center staff
The 25th Gwangju International Community Day (GIC Day) took place on Sunday, May 26, in downtown Gwangju at the ACC Plaza. Traditionally, GIC Day has been held in October every year hosted by Gwangju City and organized by the Gwangju International Center. This year’s GIC Day, however, was held in May as a joint celebration along with Together Day 2019, an annual event hosted by the Gwangju Immigration Office. Since its inception in 2005, the annual GIC Day has grown to be a truly “glocal” (global+local) event – one that is neither merely for the international community nor just for Koreans, but catering equally to both!
About 2,000 attendees visited the more than 60 booths of groups that joined this year’s event, including food booths, community booths, and culture booths, representing 20 countries from all over the world. The award for Best Food Booth went to Jayanthi Karunanidhi’s Indian Food, while a total of four culture booths, those representing Indonesia, Bangladesh, Romania, and Peru, shared the honor of “Offering best hands-on experiences.”
Also on Sunday, May 26, the 17th Annual May Concert was held in Theater 2 of the Asia Culture Center under the theme “From the Last 100 Years to the Next 100 Years” in joint commemoration of the 100 years since the March 1st Independence Movement as well as the May 18 Democratic Movement. The GIC Citizen’s Choir, a group comprised of both Korean and international residents of Gwangju, collaborated with the participating local Korean and international musicians in beautiful harmony in this year’s May concert. The emotional highlight came when the roughly 350 audience members joined the assembled group of performers to rise and sing together the anthem “Marching for Our Beloved” for the finale.
Photographs by Hillel Kim, Sarah Pittman, and Choi Jin-ung