Rasslin’ ‘n’ Dazzlin’ : 3-Day Festival Celebrates Korean, American Cultures With Lively Array of Games, Food, Music and Dancing

Wearing only rough brown shorts and a sash of brightly colored cotton, Do Won Lee and Eung Soo Lim squared off Sunday afternoon in a circular sand pit in downtown Garden Grove. Wrapping his straining arms around his opponent’s sweating body, each wrestler struggled to knock the other off his feet.

Feet flew, sweat poured and sand sprayed the audience. The sport was ssi rum , a traditional Korean wrestling form making its U.S. debut. At stake was an equally traditional grand prize: a 900-pound bull.

But that’s where ancient Eastern rites ended and modern Western reality began. The grand-prize winner would trot home the bull, but the prize for the first runner-up was a 25-inch television set. An AM-FM cassette player went to the second runner-up, and the third runner-up won a rice cooker--electric, of course.

Games on the Parking Lot

The pit was a truckload of sand dumped on the cracking asphalt parking lot of a rambling shopping center--a mall complete with fish-and-chip parlor, real estate brokerage, unemployment office and acupuncturist on Garden Grove Boulevard near Gilbert Street.

And while Lim, the winner of the first demonstration match, makes his living performing traditional dances in his Korean hometown of Jo Chi Won, Lee sells antiques in his new hometown of Los Angeles.

But the mixing of cultures was not a problem Sunday afternoon. For the ssi rum competition was part of the fourth annual Orange County Korean Festival, which managed Sunday to celebrate things both Korean and American at the same time.

The wrestling match pitted 18 amateurs against each other in what sponsors touted as the first exhibition of its kind in the United States. Lee and Lim kicked off the first round of competition. Each pair of contestants was given three chances to knock his opponent off his feet. Each winner went on to challenge another in subsequent elimination bouts.

Pre-Match Activities

Before the ancient match began, festival-goers were treated to carnival rides and helium balloons.

Vendors sold a gamut of foods, from rice balls in red bean sauce, green bean pancakes and Korean barbecued beef to cotton candy, 7-Up and Pepsi-Cola. Oriental groceries were hawked in a booth across from water softeners, and athletic shoes were sold just a booth away.

The festival, a three-day affair celebrating the county’s 70,000-member Korean community, featured a parade, a senior citizens talent show, and demonstrations of traditional drum dancing and folk music. Put on by the Orange County Korean Chamber of Commerce, it drew more than 40,000 spectators over the three-day run, its sponsors said.

Despite the cheerful trappings, the festival was not without its political moments. Bilingual posters urging voters to oppose Proposition 63 decried the English-only initiative as “unnecessary, divisive and dangerous.”

And a large booth displayed memorabilia of the upcoming 24th Olympiad, which is planned for Seoul, Korea, in 1988.

Business, however, was not great. “Some people buy, and the others just pass,” said Keith Park of Anaheim, as he stood behind a bank of T-shirts printed with Hodori, the cartoon tiger equivalent to Sam the Eagle, mascot of the 23rd Olympiad that was held in Los Angeles.

To Angela Kim, a Fullerton resident and ssi rum official, the festival gave Korean children a chance to experience the lore of their homeland and offered Californians an opportunity to better understand their new neighbors.

“Not many people are able to send the kids back to Korea to see the culture,” said Kim, 37. “It’s totally different here. . . . And if Americans see our culture more often, they will get used to it more. It will be more comfortable.”