Festival basics across Korea now come in one standard format

Scattered festival information is now in one file

The Standard Data for National Cultural Festivals (전국문화축제표준데이터) puts festival names, start and end dates, venues, descriptions, organising and hosting bodies, phone numbers, websites, addresses, and latitude and longitude into the same format. It falls under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (문화체육관광부), Korea’s national ministry for culture and tourism. The Korea Tourism Organization (한국관광공사) and local governments provide the data.

The list shows 229 participating data providers. Without standard data, anyone building a service covering festivals across Korea would need to search each institution’s website and posts, then reformat differently written dates and addresses. With the standard file, the first list can come from one file.

The file can be downloaded as Excel, a comma-separated document, and formats that web services can read easily. There is also an API, a connection point through which another service can receive information automatically. Development use is automatically approved, and the displayed allowance is 10,000. The public page does not state the period that number covers, such as whether it is per day.

The API can return up to 1,000 records at a time. Rather than calling public data again whenever a user opens a screen, a service can retrieve it regularly and store it in its own list. That is a usable scale for a small service.

The official update cycle is quarterly, and data submitted by individual institutions is combined into the national data at the beginning of each month. The data can be used through the Public Data Portal (공공데이터포털) without a separate application process, but the actual file and API licence scope and other conditions still need checking. It does not mean cancellations or venue changes will appear immediately. One file can start the work of creating a first nationwide festival list, but checking whether it is current still remains.

The work changes for a four-person tourism content company

Consider a planner at a regional tourism content company with four employees who prepares weekend outing news. To feature 30 festivals at once, they move between local government culture and tourism pages, festival websites, and map services, copying dates and addresses into a document.

They search each address again on a map to confirm the location and check whether the festival name has changed from the previous year. If an event has several venues, they need to choose a representative location. If its website is outdated, they call the responsible organisation. A wrongly copied date or a missed cancellation notice can send visitors on a wasted trip.

Assuming standard data is unavailable, even starting a nationwide service requires people for repeated data collection. For 30 festivals, each item must be found separately and rewritten into the same fields. Time goes into organising data before the team can build what visitors want.

Now the planner can first take the dates, regions, venues, and coordinates from the standard file. Simply putting the file into a screen-building tool makes it possible to test basic lists such as “this weekend,” “within an hour by car,” or “festivals on the same day.” With an automated connection, they can also receive new data at the beginning of each month and compare it with earlier values.

From there, the service can answer real questions instead of presenting a simple festival list. It can combine dates and locations to explain whether someone can go on Saturday afternoon, fit two festivals into one day, or see how far the venue is from a train station. The same data can help local merchants decide which weekends to prepare packaged products and adjusted opening hours.

People still have clear work to do. The data has no separate field for cancellation status, and its basic fields do not include photos, programmes by time slot, admission fees, parking, facilities for infants and young children, or wheelchair access information. For festivals close to their event date, users need to check the official website or call again.

A service should therefore show the source website, the data reference date, and the date a person last checked it. From one week before an event, a “official notice checked” marker matters more than automated collection. Use the data to begin building the list, then spend human time on changes and visit conditions that people may pay to know.

Abroad, enter once and send to many places

In Edinburgh, Scotland, festivals brought event and venue information from multiple festivals into a central place for news organisations and service operators to use. Previously, they created and sent custom Excel files for each news organisation. They changed to a system that approved external users could connect to for free.

It began with seven summer festivals and 10 media users in its first year, then grew to 12 festivals in 2012. In 2013, 39 external users requested information 1.02 million times. Instead of repackaging and sending the data each time, one organised list was reused across multiple guide services.

Helsinki, Finland, brought event information from museums and cultural venues into a shared repository for the city’s event calendar and external services to use together. At the time, it held about 4,000 event records and offered event names, times, places, descriptions, audiences, photos, and terms of use in multiple languages.

The information connected not only to Helsinki’s own services but also to other event-search services and a WeChat Mini Program for Chinese users. The key was not building one new visitor app. It was first building the foundation that lets event operators enter information once and send it to many screens.

Four things you can build now

A weekend festival guide for families with children could group festivals people can actually reach after they enter a date and departure point, then check parking, nursing rooms, and stroller access. It is for guardians of children in primary school or younger who usually look for places to go out but find it hard to compare many event websites.

Because a team no longer needs to collect nationwide dates and locations from scratch, it can now begin with a small region. The first screen should have three fields—“departure point,” “date to go,” and “child’s age”—plus an option to see only festivals that have been checked.

A preparation calendar for shops near festivals could show nearby festivals by date and alert shops in advance to prepare packaged products, opening hours, and notices. It is for side-dish shops and cafés near venues that do not normally offer delivery but want to increase takeaway sales on festival weekends.

Since addresses and event dates arrive in the same format, the service can automatically select only events within a chosen number of kilometres from the shop. The first screen should show the shop address, nearby festivals happening in the next 30 days, and a preparation checklist for each event.

A festival information change inbox could show nationwide data submitted by local governments alongside official festival notices, flagging items where dates, venues, or contact details differ. It is for staff at regional cultural foundations that manage several festivals and must update both websites and public data.

Monthly combined data can be compared with the previous file, so people do not need to reread the full list. The first screen should contain three groups: “possible change,” “official notice checked,” and “request source correction,” plus the number of festivals not yet handled.

A wheelchair visit-condition map could use festival locations as a base, then add human-checked information on accessible entrances, toilets, drop-off points, and slopes. It is for wheelchair users and companions who otherwise need to call venues repeatedly before attending a festival.

The standard file provides basic venue and contact details, allowing spending to focus on accessibility research. The first screen should make a festival search field, “accessible parking,” “accessible toilet,” “step-free viewing area,” and “date checked” immediately visible.

What to check in 30 minutes today

Download the Standard Data for National Cultural Festivals file, choose 10 upcoming festivals in a region you care about, and compare only their dates and venues with their official websites. If at least eight of the 10 match and the official website address leads to current notices, the list is usable as a starting point. If fewer match, building a change-check inbox before a visitor guide is more realistic.

Why this matters where you are

This is a Korean condition: a national public-data standard combines submissions from the Korea Tourism Organization and local governments, with quarterly updates and monthly national consolidation. Check whether event data in your own market has a shared format, who maintains it, and how quickly changes appear. If it does, start with a list and spend human effort on changing conditions that the base data does not include.