Midsummer regular event ‘Horror Experience’ Flood… ‘False’ in stimulus setting
Local governments are enticing vacationers by presenting a series of ‘horror experience’ events to beat the summer heat. These days, technology-based events do not stop at simply using sound or moving ghosts to frighten the audience. By using virtual reality ( VR ) devices, you can experience as if you are directly entering the world of fear, which was the realm of imagination. There are also quite a few events where professional theater actors appear and enhance their perfection. However, as they focus only on ‘stimulating’ content that captivates the eyes and ears of participants, side effects often occur. A typical example is the ‘Taehwagangdae Forest Festival’ in Ulsan, which was planned with the ‘731 Unit’ as the subject matter, but was withdrawn after being hit with a ‘mutt’.
When it’s hot, it’s also a fear experience
According to local governments across the country on the 8th, the ‘Late Night Horror Village’ at the Korean Folk Village in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, which is considered the largest horror festival in Korea, has been in progress since the 28th of last month. Twenty-two horror contents greet visitors every night until 12:00, such as ‘Oksa Chang-gwol’, which passes through the prison building of the government office, ‘Ghost in the Darkness’, which carries out a mission to find a ghost with resentment, and ‘Sokchon Ghost Story’, which is heard in an eerie thatched-roof house. Gyeongbuk Gyeongju Expo Grand Park prepared the longest-distance outdoor horror experience in Korea, ‘Lumina Horror Night – The Forest of Evil’, until the 20th. It is decorated with the story of receiving a letter from a friend who suddenly stopped hearing from a year ago asking for help in the forest, and taking a bell containing a secret plan and going to the forest where the demons live. Participants have to survive in an outdoor forest consisting of 14 points over a 1.6km section, avoiding evil spirits, and the fear doubles on rainy days. An official from the Expo Park said, “Since it is an experience enjoyed in nature rather than a set, there are many responses that say it is much creepier and more fun.
In addition, ‘Summer Horror Night’, a travel product that tours Busan’s major night views while enjoying an extreme fear experience on a bus with King Yeomra, the Virgin Ghost, and the Ghost of Mongdal, for 2 hours and 30 minutes, is also eye-catching. Cheongdo-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do runs ‘The Tale of a Gumiho in Sindori’ every Saturday until the 19th.
‘Value for money’ is good, but…
The reason why local governments put effort into horror experience events is that they can expect great effects at a relatively low cost.
It is a ‘cost-effective’ item that can elicit a response from participants without having to hire a popular singer who has become a basic festival menu, and without spending tens of millions of won to set up fireworks in the night sky. Lee Min-young (24), who recently went to a Korean Folk Village horror experience with her friends, said, “I felt like my whole body was frozen because of the ghosts that popped up all over the place from time to time.” Experts are of the opinion that actual fear experiences have the effect of lowering body temperature and improving mood.
The problem is that as similar types of events are pouring in, programs with stimulating elements are produced without filtering to catch even a little more attention.
Ulsan ‘Taehwagang Great Forest Festival’, which will be held from the 11th안전놀이터, received strong criticism for putting up the ‘731 Unit’. The very idea of inserting a Japanese germ warfare unit, which conducted human experimentation during World War II, into the program is absurd. The organizers belatedly changed the setting to ‘Daebat Sanghoe’ to hear the sound of dead souls in the bamboo field, but voices of disappointment remain. On the homepage of Iksan City Hall in Jeonbuk Province, where the prison set was turned into a horror experience center and the event was held, “Why do children have to go to the prison set to experience horror? A protest message was posted saying, “Please make a more wholesome and healthy program.”
The competition for more and more stimulating horror content continues outside the market. A typical example is the illegal haunted house experience videos uploaded by YouTubers. Among the places in the video are the former sexually transmitted disease control center in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi-do, where the government forcibly quarantined “comfort women” in the US military base town for 20 years from the early 1970s, and Siloam, Gijang, Busan, the successor of Brother Welfare Center, which committed human rights violations after forcibly detaining innocent citizens in the past. There are numerous places with a painful history, such as the house of Mr.
Experts point out that it is difficult to have sustainable competitiveness with a simple logic that recklessly maximizes fear. Kang Jun-soo, a festival evaluation committee member at the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and professor of tourism at Anyang University, said, “If we focus only on things that can attract immediate hits, we have no choice but to produce content that is stimulating without discrimination.” It is important to accurately determine the identity of the region and unravel it through storytelling,” he advised.