BACOLOD City Mayor Monico Puentevella said over the weekend that they need to improve next year’s staging of the Korean festival after its last event held last August 15 failed to draw the needed crowd.
Puentevella said the Korean festival publicity was overtaken by the Bacolod City Water District (Baciwa) controversy that focused on the leadership crisis in Baciwa after general manager Juliana Carbon was suspended by three directors.
Next year, Puentevella said they will stage a better festival.
He said they will change the name of the festival from Korean (Gangnam) festival to Kimchi festival.
Puentevella said that Gangnam has a bad connotation thus they will change it to Kimchi festival by 2015 where they will hold the event at the Lacson tourism strip.
It is but natural to have birth pains because this was the first time for Bacolod to celebrate the Korean festival, he said.
The City Government has allocated about P500,000 for the staging of the Korean festival that was held Friday, a year after a sisterhood agreement was signed between the City of Bacolod and the Seogu District, Daegu Metropolitan City, Republic of Korea.
The agreement was intended to strengthen the historical ties and common progress between the two cities while the celebration of the partnership was initially planned during the signing of the agreement.