Sunchang Tteokbokki Festa 2026 — 21–22 Nov, free entry, workshops booked on Ticketlink

Sunchang KOREA Tteokbokki Festa is a food festival run by Sunchang County and the Sunchang Fermentation Tourism Foundation that puts the county's fermented sauces into tteokbokki, Korea's spicy simmered rice cakes. This year the site grows from the Fermentation Theme Park to take in the Traditional Gochujang Folk Village as well, and stalls sell tteokbokki developed by residents of Sunchang's towns and townships with local sauces alongside "alley tteokbokki" from around the country. Getting in costs nothing and only some activities are paid, so the day is easier if you separate what needs booking from what you can just walk up to.

What is new this year?

• A bigger site — the Traditional Gochujang Folk Village joins the Fermentation Theme Park as a festival venue.
• More performances — flash mobs, nanta drumming, bubble and magic shows, with more on stage than last year.
• Reworked activities and contests — new audience-participation activities and a tteokbokki cooking contest.
• On the menu — tteokbokki from Sunchang's towns and townships through to "national alley tteokbokki", all in one place.
• A chef's cooking show — the website promotes a fusion tteokbokki show by chef Cho Gwang-hyo of the Netflix series Culinary Class Wars; the timetable lists it as "Tteokbokki Lab (chef's cooking show)" at 1:00 pm on both days.

What kind of tteokbokki is there to eat?

The centrepiece is tteokbokki developed by residents of Sunchang's towns and townships using local sauces and farm produce. Local press coverage of a menu tasting at the end of October mentioned rosé, curry and fried (gangjeong) versions, but the final dishes and prices vary by stall, so check on the day. If you want something other than tteokbokki, the Maekom Hall food court serves other meals.

Saturday or Sunday — which day to go?

If you are going for the stage, the days differ. The opening, the flash mob contest and the university tteokbokki cook-off are on day one (Saturday); the Sunchang village contest and popularity vote and the closing show are on day two (Sunday). The chef's show and the repeating workshops run at the same times on both days. The table regroups the official programme schedule by day.

How much are the paid workshops, and how do you book?

There are five paid activities. On the festival website, open the "experience sign-up" menu, choose a programme and press its booking button to reach the Ticketlink page. The prices below are the per-person amounts on each programme page.

What can you do without booking?

• Sunchang-dong Tteokbokki — retro-themed festival merchandise, a tteokbokki pop-up shop and themed photo spots
• Arts and crafts — 20 activities such as candles, squishy toys and keycaps (paid on the spot)
• Lucky tteok draw — a timed stopwatch game, two tries each; succeed and you win a free tteokbokki coupon
• Burn off the tteokbokki — a fitness challenge of squats, balance, push-ups and skipping
• A residents' flea market and the Maekom Hall food court

Is the Sunchang Jang Museum next door worth a stop?

The Sunchang Jang (fermented sauce) Museum is on the same road as the festival site, which makes it an easy add-on. It covers how chillies reached Korea and their varieties, how blocks of fermented soybean (meju) are made into sauces, and how fermentation works; its best-known exhibit is a giant red chilli you can walk inside. We could not confirm its hours during the festival, so check at the site before going in.

How do you get there, and is there parking?

• Sunchang Fermentation Theme Park — take a county bus from Sunchang town and get off at the Baeksan Village (백산마을) stop.
• Traditional Gochujang Folk Village — the Folk Village (민속마을) county bus stop is the nearest.
• Campers on "A night in Sunchang" must bring their own tent and camping gear.
• Book and pay only through the Ticketlink pages linked from the official festival website.

Getting there from Seoul, and what to expect without Korean

Sunchang has no railway station. Intercity and express buses run to Sunchang bus terminal from Seoul (roughly three to three and a half hours) and more often from Jeonju and Gwangju; from the terminal the festival site is a short county-bus or taxi ride. If you are coming by KTX, Jeongeup or Namwon are the nearest stations, with a bus or taxi onward. Everything at the festival is in Korean — the website, the timetable, the stage MC — but eating, the stopwatch game, the fitness challenge and the photo spots need no language. The catch is booking: Ticketlink's Korean site usually asks for verification with a Korean mobile number, so if you cannot book, build the day around the free programme and the food.