GANGHWADO ISLAND, Incheon -– A special wedding ceremony took place Sunday at Ganghwa Peace Observatory on the border island of Ganghwado, off South Korea’s western coast.

The island’s residents came out to see the unlikely event, which drew guests from other parts of the country and even from other Asian countries. But the groom was nowhere to be found. In a contingency plan, the bridesmaid and the bride’s father came out to pick a groom candidate from the audience.

The ceremony was in fact a scene from a satirical, humorous traditional Korean wedding play, the opening performance for the DMZ Peace Art Festival running this week. 

“The groom here represents North Korea,” said Choe Jun-ho, professor of the Korea National University of Arts School of Drama. A wedding without a groom symbolizes the division of Korea, he added. 

The weeklong festival is one of the series of cultural events that mark the 70th anniversary of Korea’s independence from Japan’s colonial rule, but it focuses on another meaning of the anniversary -– 70 years of the division of the Korean Peninsula.

Starting on Ganghwado Island, the festival will continue Wednesday and Friday in two other border towns of Goseong and Cheorwon in Gangwon Province. 

Following the opening wedding show, a memorial service performance that attempts to console souls of victims killed in the Korean War on Wednesday and a peace concert and performance that wish for unification of the two Koreas on Friday.

“The festival invited 40 Asian performers who will also tour three border towns and wish for peace and unification,” said Kim Bong-ryol, president of the Korea National University of Arts, at the press conference Sunday. The KNUA co-organized the festival with the Culture Ministry and Cheorwon County Office. 

The opening performance Sunday featured artists from Myanmar, Brunei, Vietnam and the Philippines. The performers showed their own traditional wedding dances to Korean audiences.

Two male Filipino dancers performed the powerful traditional Filipino wedding dance “Uya-uy,” wearing revealing traditional dance costumes.  

“The dance represents good luck and pushes away demons from a wedding,” said Leomar P. Requejo, 23.

His dance partner Mikko S. Garlan, 18, said: “We are very happy because we perform here to share our tradition.”

Dancers from Myanmar demonstrated a traditional elegant Burmese wedding ceremony accompanied with a beautiful old Burmese harp sound.

“This is a great way to share knowledge and learn each other’s culture,” said Aye Chan Thu, a 35 year-old Burmese dance instructor.

The festival is open to everyone for free. The Wednesday performance will take place at 3 p.m. at Goseong Unification Observatory and the Friday performance will be held at 8 p.m. at the Workers’ Party Headquarters, a historic building in Cheorwon.

By Lee Woo-young (wylee@heraldcorp.com)