보령머드축제에서 직접 체험한 머드의 매력과 피부 효능 탐구
The Boryeong Mud Festival is Korea's representative summer festival held in the background of Boryeong Daecheon Beach in Chungcheongnam-do every summer, providing a special experience for domestic and foreign visitors to beat the summer heat by running around in the mud. As the effectiveness of mud related to skin care beyond simple entertainment has also been scientifically proven, the festival has become a complex cultural event that encompasses beauty and leisure at the same time. In this article, we examine the vivid experiences of the mud festival and the positive effects of mud ingredients on the skin.
More Than a Festival, Go to Boryeong Mud Festival
The Boryeong Mud Festival, one of the representative summer festivals in Korea, has grown remarkably since it first began in 1998 in terms of its size and international recognition. In July, when the heat is raging, hundreds of thousands of people gather at Boryeong Daecheon Beach to enjoy a pleasant and cool experience through the unusual subject matter of mud. This year's festival was also crowded with visitors from Korea as well as from abroad, and the tangled sound and laughter in the mud made you feel the true "nature of the festival." The first thing that stands out when you arrive at the site is a large mud bath, mud slide, mud prison, and mud shower zone. The festival participants bump into each other with mud on their whole bodies, and they become one with no hesitation to laugh and scream even with complete strangers. This sense of collective participation and liberation can also be interpreted as the social value of the festival. The programs I participated in this year were "Mud Wrestling Experience" and "Mud Beauty Pack Making," which was an opportunity to feel the possibility of utilizing local special resources and the connection with the beauty industry beyond just playing. In addition, an interpreter information center and a global promotion booth for foreigners were operated on the site, so I could realize how carefully Boryeong-si is operating the festival as a local brand. Most impressive of all, as soon as anyone enters the mud, they forget about their nationality, age, and job and are immersed in pure play.
Mud's Skin Efficacy Proven by Science
Mud is not just a festive entertainment. Boryeong mud contains a large amount of natural mineral ingredients that are also recognized worldwide, and the minerals and organic ingredients in it have a very positive effect on skin health. In particular, it is known to be excellent for exfoliating, cleaning pores, and soothing skin because it contains a lot of silica (SiO2), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), etc. According to the data provided by Boryeong City, Boryeong Mud consists of clay that has been aged for a long time at high temperatures and has very fine particles and excellent adsorption power, which effectively removes sebum and waste. In fact, after participating in the festival, the skin surface became smooth, and when washing your face on the same day, you could feel that it was purified to the depths of your pores. In addition, the minerals contained in mud are effective in brightening skin tone and calming inflammation by promoting blood circulation. For this reason, mud not only has a simple beauty effect but also has a positive response to people with sensitive skin such as atopic dermatitis and seborrheic dermatitis. In fact, the Boryeong Mud cosmetics line-up is exported from domestic and international markets, and there are many products that have been certified for functionality. As such, mud is not just a play material, but a beauty resource given by nature, and by experiencing this resource directly through the festival, you can maximize the experience of reliability and efficacy. These characteristics make the Boryeong Mud Festival a fusion festival that combines industry, tourism, and science beyond simple events.
The Sustainability of the Mud Festival and the Future of the Local Economy
The Boryeong Mud Festival is not just a tourist event. It is a brand strategy and regional innovation model that re-examines the value of the natural resources of the city of Boryeong, utilizes them from various angles through festivals, and even promotes industrial expansion. Mud is not only a beauty resource based on scientific evidence that it is good for the skin, but it also functions as a healing tool to relieve social stress by forming a "space to play" by itself. Along with continuous research, the current aspect of connecting locally produced mud resources to various commercialization strategies in connection with festivals provides opportunities for benchmarking other local festivals. In fact, Boryeong City is implementing various expansion policies such as the establishment of a mud theme park, the globalization of mud cosmetics brands, and the year-round operation of experience programs, which lead to employment and income generation for local people. In addition, even after the COVID-19 pandemic, the Mud Festival has flexibly changed the format of the festival in various ways, such as non-face-to-face experience kits and online broadcasts, suggesting the possibility that the festival can evolve into a digital-based global participatory platform in the future, rather than simply offline. A festival that connects the world through mud and leads the region to the world. That is the true value of the Boryeong Mud Festival.