Korean Cultural Center in the United Arab Emirates held a special event on February 5 (Tue) in celebration of Korean New Year's Day, Seollal.

Started with a visit from the UAE University students, the highlight of Seollal in the UAE was the performance of the Korean/World music group Coreyah which more than 200 audience including UAE University students and Korean Cultural Center students have enjoyed together.

55 UAE University students visited Korean Cultural Center and experienced Korean culture through Korean painting and Najeon-chilgi (mother-of-pearl craft) workshops.

Watching the video about Korean paintings first, students had basic understanding of Korean folk paintings then they painted tiger, peony, fish and various charms in Korean folk painting style.

At Najeon-chilgi workshop, students designed their own necklaces using mother-of-pearls and experienced the beauty of Korea.

▲ Introducing Korean New Year’s Day and screening the celebrative images in the ICT Hall

In the ICT Hall of the center, the New Year's Day atmosphere was created through the Seollal introduction video and new year’s greetings from K-pop artists. In addition, a variety of Korean traditional games like Yoot-nori, Gonggi-nori, Tuho and Jegi Chagi were prepared for visitors to try Korea’s traditional holiday culture.

▲ The house was full with a big audience showing the interest in the Korean music

More than expected number of people attended the performance of Coreyah, showing the great interest in the Korean music. Coreyah is a group with a vocalist, a guitarist, a percussionist and three Korean traditional music players, and they performed their best songs like 'Tomorrow Morning' and ‘It Dawns on Me'. The audience even cheered and applauded in excitement when Coreyah performed 'Clap!' and 'Born Wrong'. With the flood of encores, Coreyah performed more songs than they initially prepared.

▲ Enthusiastic atmosphere during the performance

The celebration of New Year's Day at Korean Cultural Center concluded with a taste of Korean traditional rice cake, which is one of the holiday food.

The audience enjoyed celebrating Seollal at Korean Cultural Center, some commenting "We had a great time and learned more about Seollal", and "enjoyed the food and culture together with family".