Light has a power to fascinate people, and is also a symbol of hope ― and what is more appropriate for the holiday season than a city full of seasonal lights?
Three central Seoul locales ― Gwanghwamun, the Cheonggye stream area and City Hall Plaza ― were ablaze with more than 200,000 lights yesterday evening after a ceremony at which the “Hi Seoul Luminarie” was launched. The displays, part of what the city and the sponsors call a Grand Charity Festival, will shine for five hours every evening through the end of next month, a period that encompasses Christmas, New Year’s Day and the lunar New Year period.
An Italian designer, Lucio Mariano, 44, designed the light displays. He and his team from Mariano Light in Italy, twelve persons in all, spent 18 days setting up the three displays; three of the team will stay in Seoul until they go dark to handle any required maintenance. Five sea containers were needed to ship all the lights here from Italy.
These large light displays are becoming popular around the world; Kobe, Japan, for example, has erected one every year since 1995, in part as a memorial to those killed in the earthquake there in January of that year.
This is Mr. Mariano's first display in Seoul, although he designed one for Bucheon, Gyeonggi province, in 2003. He said he considered the city’s atmosphere to select displays for the sites, although environmental and financial considerations also played a part.
“I wanted to do something romantic in the Cheonggye stream area, because I saw that a lot of couples come to walk next to the water,” he said. That inspired his “lovers’ bridge” motif there. The circular layout of the grass at City Hall Plaza made it natural, he said, to lay out his lighting display with that geometric shape as a theme.
Asked why Our Neighbors, a charitable organization and a sponsor of the festival, decided to spend more than a billion won ($1 million) on the show rather than use the funds for helping the poor, Park Jong-in of the group said the display was another way of returning something to society.
“The festival will give people, whether they are poor or rich, something to enjoy in this cold weather,” he said, adding that corporate sponsors had contributed to the cost. And the Salvation Army will be on hand to collect donations from the visitors to the displays. That’s charity too, he said.


by Park Sung-ha

2005.12.15 22:19 입력