The Culture Ministry is hosting a Hallyu festival, titled “On: Hallyu Festival,” Nov. 16-23.

“This event will provide comfort to people around the world who are exhausted from COVID-19 while providing helpful opportunities to local businesses through the power of hallyu,” Culture Minister Park Yang-woo said in a statement.

Most of this year’s events will take place online and the festival is organized jointly with the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, the Korea Creative Content Agency, the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency and local portal giant Naver.

The Culture Ministry’s new Hallyu department, which was established in June as a control tower to oversee diverse Korean Wave-related projects undertaken by various departments and ministries, is leading the event.

The event aims to achieve the new department’s three main policy goals, which were announced in July: diversifying Hallyu content, fostering other industries through Hallyu content and creating a sustainable environment for the growth of Hallyu.

The event will feature trade meetings, live commerce sessions and an online concert.

In the Grand Ballroom of Coex in southern Seoul, an online videoconference will take place among 79 local content companies representing industries such as animation, gaming, broadcasting, music and fashion, and around 200 overseas buyers. Spaces for online videoconference meetings connecting buyers and content creators will be set up at the Korea Creative Content Agency’s business centers in Jakarta and Beijing while the event is going on.

For the live commerce sessions, the Culture Ministry will join hands with portal giant Naver to have 12 companies sell Hallyu-related goods, such as character merchandise, beauty and fashion products. The items will also be sold through television home shopping channel Home & Shopping.

An online platform (http://on-hallyufestival.kr) will be organized to introduce 105 Korean companies and promote their content. This website will also provide more detailed information about the festival. All information will be provided in English for global participants, according to the Culture Ministry.

The K-pop concert will be held on the last day, and will be livestreamed to 230 countries through Naver’s platform V Live.

The organizer emphasized that this concert is special as it will use advanced technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality and cross reality.

K-pop bands SuperM, Monsta X and ITZY as well as Indonesian singer-songwriter Raisa, Thai boy band Trinity and Vietnam’s K-ICM will be performing during this concert. Korean music act Leenalchi and the Ambiguous Dance Company, which recently became popular with its video created with the Korea Tourism Organization, will also participate in the virtual show.

By Song Seung-hyun (ssh@heraldcorp.com)