Garden Grove : Korean-Americans to Hold Annual Festival

Orange County’s 70,000-member Korean-American community this week will begin celebrating its annual Korean Festival, to be highlighted by a 15-float parade down Garden Grove Boulevard.

The festival will open Friday at 6:30 p.m. with a ceremony at the Garden Grove Community Meeting Center, 11300 Stanford Ave. Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) will be a guest at the banquet and will serve as grand marshal in the parade on Oct. 19.

Festival chairman Tae Soo Kim said the event was originally planned to coincide with Ch’usok, the Korean Thanksgiving holiday on Aug. 15, but that conflicts with some of the groups involved forced them to push it back two months.

Kim said the county’s estimated Korean population has mushroomed from 40,000 in 1981, and attributed the increase to better employment and educational opportunities here. “Most came here from other areas of the country, a lot of them from Los Angeles, where about 200,000 Korean-Anericans live,” he said.

He said 15,000 to 20,000 people are expected to line the boulevard for the parade, which will run from Brookhurst to Magnolia streets starting at 3 p.m.

In addition to the floats, the parade will feature city and county officials, about a dozen bands and drill teams, including the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station band, two Korean folk music and dance troupes, equestrian units and several martial arts demonstrations.

Kim said several other ethnic groups will also participate, including Vietnamese and American Indian dancers. Events during the week include soccer and table tennis tournaments, art exhibits and various contests, including one for senior citizen crooners and another for church choirs.

For more information, call the festival organizing committee at (714) 638-7600.