{"id":144689,"date":"2026-09-06T08:17:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T08:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/144689\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T08:17:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T08:17:16","slug":"hanwhas-seoul-fireworks-festival-what-does-it-cost-to-light-up-the-han-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/144689\/","title":{"rendered":"Hanwha&#8217;s Seoul fireworks festival: What does it cost to light up the Han River?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The annual event has continued for more than 20 years since its first edition in 2000<\/p>\n<p>       <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1788682636_303_news-p.v1.20260905.03c7b696424d452e9283dd3ac4a15f85_P1.jpg\" alt=\"A fireworks and drone show held Friday at Yeouido Hangang Park in Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, marks the eve of the Seoul International Fireworks Festival 2026. [Yonhap]\"\/>     A fireworks and drone show held Friday at Yeouido Hangang Park in Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, marks the eve of the Seoul International Fireworks Festival 2026. [Yonhap]  <\/p>\n<p>Hanwha Group&#8217;s flagship corporate social responsibility event, the Seoul International Fireworks Festival, kicks off its main program Saturday evening at Yeouido Hangang Park. The festival carries a total budget of 13 billion won ($9.56 million) this year, with safety management alone accounting for 4.5 billion won of that figure.<\/p>\n<p>According to business circles, Hanwha Corp. allocated the 13 billion won budget to host this year&#8217;s edition of the festival. As the largest privately organized festival in South Korea \u2014 drawing more than 1 million visitors annually \u2014 the organizers set aside roughly one-third of the total budget for safety management.<\/p>\n<p>The safety management budget marks a roughly 17 percent increase from 3.85 billion won last year. To ensure the massive crowd passes without incident, Hanwha deployed more than 5,000 safety and crowd-control personnel across the Yeouido area \u2014 the largest such deployment in the festival&#8217;s history. This year, the organizers placed equal emphasis on safety management, backed by record staffing levels and advanced monitoring technology, alongside the spectacular fireworks display.<\/p>\n<p>A range of cutting-edge technologies will also be in full operation. The organizers will run &#8220;Orange Safety,&#8221; an app developed in partnership with a mobile carrier that measures real-time crowd density, and will monitor on-the-ground conditions through a closed-circuit television integrated control system using KT Corp.&#8217;s 5G network slicing technology.<\/p>\n<p>Hanwha Group has held the festival for more than 20 years since its inaugural edition in 2000, skipping only years when cancellations were unavoidable \u2014 such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. The event costs around 10 billion won each year and generates no separate revenue, yet the group continues to run it as a signature social contribution initiative in keeping with the management philosophy of &#8220;Together, Further&#8221; championed by Hanwha Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn.<\/p>\n<p>Kim urged organizers to stage the fireworks &#8220;higher and bigger&#8221; so that more citizens could enjoy the show. In response, the viewing zones, previously concentrated in central Yeouido, were expanded to areas near Mapo Bridge, Wonhyo Bridge and Hangang Railway Bridge.<\/p>\n<p>After the festival concludes, a volunteer corps of about 1,200 Hanwha employees will carry out a cleanup campaign across Yeouido Hangang Park. For those unable to attend in person, a live stream of the fireworks show will be available on the official YouTube channel &#8220;Hanwha TV.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>forest@heraldcorp.com<\/p>\n<p>This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The annual event has continued for more than 20 years since its first edition in 2000 A fireworks&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[355,354],"class_list":["post-144689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hanwha","tag-hanwha","tag-hanwha-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}