Photos: Overpeck Park prepares for Korean Festival
RIDGEFIELD PARK – From the traditional bowls of bibimbap to the new global allure of K-Pop, the Korean harvest festival at Overpeck County Park seemed to have something for everyone on Saturday.
The Korean Produce Association of New York held the annual festival in New Jersey this year, a first in the event’s 29-year history. Thousands of attendees from as far as Cape Cod and as close as Teaneck and Englewood descended on the park for the start of the two-day event featuring Korean food, entertainment and wares.
The shift to New Jersey created some challenges for visitors, many of whom showed up at the Leonia section of Overpeck instead of the Ridgefield Park section where it was held off Challenger Road. But once there, crowds sampled tasty dishes while vendors peddled magazines, handmade soaps, candies and other goods.
Business was steady at the booth run by Sang Lee and his mother, Michelle Park, who operate the Youhun Korean Restaurant in Palisades Park. Lee said they liked that the event drew such a large crowd.
“We have the East Coast of America – New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland,” he said. “But the most important thing is the food.”
The tables under their tent spilled over with Korean delicacies. There was kimbab (Korean-style sushi), dumplings stuffed with minced kimchi and pork, hot dogs deep fried in a corn batter, crispy scallion pancakes, sliced pork and melon-flavored ice cream treats.
Under other tents, vendors grilled fresh fish over coals, barbequed squid and pinched samples of roasted pork straight from the hide of a roasted pig.
At the Allkpop.com tent, teen girls – and a few boys- lined up for a chance to win free K-Pop (Korean popular music) CDs or other prizes.
“It’s like pop music, but in Korean,” Katie Rasallis, 16, of Cape Cod explained of the music genre with a growing American fan base. Her friend Amanda Richards won a CD of the K-Pop star BOA.
Friend Augusta Davis, 17, said they weren’t able to score tickets for Sunday’s big concert featuring a lineup of K-Pop bands and a performance by The Village People, “so we decided to come to the festival.” The concert is expected to draw more than 25,000 fans.
The relocation of the event to New Jersey this year created tensions between the Korean Produce Association of New York and the Korean American Association of New Jersey. The latter group held a harvest festival last weekend in Bergen County, but members felt that they experienced a lower turnout as a result of competition from the New York group’s festival this weekend.
The New York organizers said they were forced to move the festival to Overpeck after they had trouble obtaining a permit in New York, because of the large turnout expected.
Suji Lee, who does marketing for the Korea Central Daily News, said Overpeck Park provides much more space than what the group had in New York, but is a challenge to get to.
“It’s alright because it has more land, but it’s very difficult to come because of the transportation,” she said.
E-mail: rouse@northjersey.com
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