Jeonju Movie Street

A tall, refined modern building in the heart of downtown Jeonju catches your eyes. It's the Korea Traditional Culture Center. The Korea Traditional Culture Center is a facility for connecting the dynamically-changing traditional culture of Korea to the modern and next generations and recreating future values instead of limiting the culture to the time, people, and region. The center consists of the Hanji Project Support Center, Traditional Culture Creation Center, Creative Korean Food Center, Craft Exhibition Hall, Playground Marudal, and Jeonju Cheonnyeon Hanji Hall. You can enjoy various experiences, exhibitions, and programs from making hanji to cooking traditional Jeonju food. Tradition is a valuable asset to preserve and inherit in terms of learning the old and finding the new. Even if you haven't had a chance to visit the Jeonju National Museum or Jeonju Museum of History, make sure to visit the Korea Traditional Culture Center to feel the traditional beauty, taste, and excitement of Jeonju.

Every spring, quiet Jeonju becomes boisterous. It's because the Jeonju International Film Festival (JIFF) that invites the movie people from all around the world is held. Started in 2000, the JIFF is a festival for introducing alternative films, digital films, and independent films of Asia that break the common notions and ideas on films instead of mainstream films. When the JIFF begins, red lights symbolizing the festival fill the JIFF Film Street and “Jeonju Dome” specially installed during the festival period plays unique and high-quality independent films. Visitors can also enjoy shopping at booths that sell the JIFF goods. At other times, it is a popular place with famous stores, restaurants, and cafes beloved by young people like Hongdae and Gyeongnidan Street in Seoul. On weekends, artists in Jeonju participate in the festival to show musical, dance, and busking performances, and young entrepreneurs gather and open a flea market for selling handmade souvenirs. As its name suggests, there are many cinemas including CGV. Originally, it was a famous cinema street, having 15 theaters from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. After the Korea Cinema and Samnam Cinema opened in 1963, small and large cinemas were built and became the hub of local culture for showing various performances, including plays, classic and popular music, and traditional Korean music in addition to the screening of films. They are all gone now when a multiplex cinema entered in the early 2000s, but their vestiges remain and lead the JIFF. There is a “Guide Map of Old Jeonju Cinemas” at the entrance of the street. It guide the pictures and map of old cinemas, bringing good memories for Jeonju citizens and creating a retro mood for tourists.

The area around Jeolla Gamyeong and the gaeksa, the old government guesthouse, was Jeonju's center in earlier times. During the Joseon period, the spaces that stood for Jeonju's administration, its commerce, and the royal house were all gathered here. The road that runs from the gaeksa past Jeolla Gamyeong to Gyeonggijeon Shrine and the Hanok Village holds Jeonju's yesterday and today intact. This area was Jeonju's foremost downtown as late as the 1980s, but people drained away in the 1990s and, tied up in redevelopment plans, it filled with nothing but empty shops. Then, about a decade ago, young entrepreneurs began gathering one by one to open cafes, restaurants, and small shops inside old buildings left as they were. Young people came back for the appeal of that reversal, an exterior unchanged from the old days and a stylish space appearing when you open the door. And by analogy with Gyeongnidan-gil in Seoul, the area came to be called Gaengnidan-gil. Jeonju's gaeksa stands at the center of this street. Its formal name is Pungpaejigwan. Pungpae is a figure of speech for the ancestral home of the founder of a dynasty. Jeonju was the ancestral home of King Taejo Yi Seong-gye, so it was called Pungpaejihyang, and the Jeonju gaeksa took the name Pungpaejigwan to carry that meaning. Jeolla Gamyeong stands not far from the gaeksa. It was the provincial office that covered what are now North Jeolla, South Jeolla, and Jeju. Unlike other provincial offices, which moved from time to time, this one never left Jeonju throughout the Joseon dynasty. It is said to have been second in size only to the Pyongyang provincial office, so large was its scale and so considerable its authority. If the Hanok Village is the traditional Jeonju, Gaengnidan-gil is called the new Jeonju. Murals cover the old walls, small spaces host exhibitions by local artists, and on weekends you may come across flea markets of handmade goods and busking performances. Nobody ordered any of it; the culture grew naturally from the hands of the young creators gathered on this street. Coffee brewed from beans roasted on the premises, Jeonju-style desserts, and craft beer from small breweries are tucked away in the alleys as well. These character-filled spaces lead to Film Street. Several cinemas and screening halls line the street, and the Jeonju International Film Festival is held every spring. Because the festival puts independent and art films ahead of commercial ones, Jeonju is known as the city of film. On Gaengnidan-gil, then, even the old buildings each have a color of their own, open-air tables are set out in the narrow lanes, and music drifting from the shops adds warmth. The vintage alleys of daytime turn into a snug, romantic street after dark. So peer in wherever you feel drawn, and take this alley slowly.