On St Patrick’s day ever growing crowds of people, across the world, proclaim themselves ‘Irish for a day’, dress in green and descend on their nearest Irish bar, St Patrick’s Day festival or Parade to drink Guinness and celebrate all things Irish – Seoul, South Korea was no exception.

Last Saturday, along with hundreds of Koreans, Americans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders, we joined with the Irish expat community and headed to the Seoul Irish festival and St Patrick’s Day celebration.

Arriving at the festival site corporate organises Diageo were well in evidence with Guinness logos emblazoned everywhere. Every second person was wearing a Guinness hat or T-shirt or both. Kids (including me and Kat) were being given Guinness balloons and as we entered the festival we were were given a mock airline ticket for Guinness airways, entitling us to free samples of Guinness and Baileys.

Once we’d checked out the festival site and sipped a Baileys blended with ice – no 12 noon isn’t too early to drink – we found the customary face painters and got Shamrocks pained on our cheeks.

Then we headed for the free Guinness and, whilst watching a Korean band sing Irish pop songs, supped our drinks -after all St Patrick’s Day is all about the alcohol – isn’t it?

Well actually no it’s not (just) about the alcohol! According to Wikipedia St Patrick’s Day dates back to 1737, when the first public celebration of St Patrick was held in – no, not Ireland – Boston, America! It is celebrated on March 17th because this is the day it is widely believed St Patrick died.

St Patrick was the second Bishop of Ireland and made it his life’s work to convert the native Pagans to Christianity. The traditional icon of St Patrick’s Day, the shamrock, is said to have been used by him to explain the Trinity. It is reported that in sermons he used the three leaf shape to represent how the father, the son and holy spirit could all exist as separate elements of the same entity.

St Patrick’s Day didn’t (officially) become an festival of all things Irish combined with too much alcohol until the mid 1990s and until the 1970s there was a law against pubs opening on St Patrick’s Day. In the ’90s the Irish government began a campaign to use St Patrick’s Day to showcase Ireland and it’s culture and set up a group with the specific aim of: “offering a national festival that ranks amongst the greatest in the world… providing the opportunity… for people of Irish decent (and those who sometimes wish they were Irish) to attend and join in imaginative and expressive celebrations,” and to “project internationally an accurate image of Ireland as a creative, professional and sophisticated country with wide appeal…” (source Wikipedia).

Despite the origins of St Patrick’s Day the festival in Seoul certainly didn’t pertain to be a religious celebration, unless you worshiped the mighty pint of Guinness!! Instead it was about celebrating and country, a culture, getting together with your mates and having a jolly good time…oh… and having a few beers.

By the time we’d exhausted our fee samples it was time for the organisers to begin gearing up for the parade. With no more fee alcohol on offer we walked the 200 meters where the parade would begin and watched them prepare for the off. Little did we know that we would end up IN the parade!

We’d been standing around chatting and getting our photos taken with Korean kids (who’d obviously be set some school work to talk to foreigners) when a guy came and asked us if we were in the parade. “No,” was our response, obviously that was the right, or wrong answer, depending on how you look at it, because before we knew it we’d been whisked us away and positioned behind a large banner that we’d been charged with carrying for the duration of the parade. How do we get ourselves into these things?

The parade set off and once I’d overcome the initial embarrassment of once again being stared at, having my photo taken and literally, being paraded in front of hundreds of Koreans I soon got into the spirit of things. There was a Korean dancing band in front of us and we were all soon jiggling about, waving to the amassed crowd and getting into spirit of the event.

Once the parade was over and we’d packed away our banner there was nothing more left to do than head home and reflect on one of my more unusual St Patrick’s Day experiences.

More photos of the day can be found here.

* Posted by j150vsc on 21/03/2007.