Korean festivals are relaxed places and almost nothing in this guide is enforced. These are the rules people follow without thinking about them, which is exactly why nobody tells you about them, and why a visitor can break one without ever finding out.
Nothing here is a test. Korean festivals are welcoming to foreign visitors and mistakes are forgiven instantly. But three or four of these are worth knowing in advance, because they are the ones where getting it wrong causes an actual problem rather than a mild look.
Photography
Photographing the stage, the food, the decorations, the lanterns and the general crowd is normal and expected. Everyone around you is doing it.
Photographing a specific person’s face is different. Korea has strong portrait rights — a legal concept, not only a social one — and a strong norm to match. Photographing strangers without asking, and children in particular, can turn into a confrontation very quickly. The fix is simple: ask, or frame so faces are not identifiable.
Asking is easy. Raising the camera slightly, catching the person’s eye, and a small questioning nod is understood. 사진 찍어도 될까요? (sajin jjigeodo doelkkayo? — “may I take a photo?”) is the phrase if you want one.
Stall owners generally do not mind photos of the food, and often like it. The person cooking is a person, though, and the same rule applies to their face.
At traditional ceremonies, look for a sign or a rope. Some rituals are not photographed while they are in progress, and the same ceremony may be perfectly fine to photograph before it begins and after it ends. If nobody around you is taking pictures during a particular sequence, that is the answer.
Drones need permission and are restricted in many areas. Do not fly one over a festival crowd.
Shared tables
Festival seating is communal. Taking an empty stool at a table where somebody is already eating is normal, not intrusive, and being joined at yours is equally normal. A small nod when you sit down is the whole interaction; conversation is not expected in either direction.
Do not spread your belongings across a table you are not filling. Space is the scarce resource on a festival ground, and a bag on the seat next to you at a busy hour is the one thing likely to draw a comment.
If you finish and others are waiting, leaving is the courtesy. Lingering over an empty plate at a four-seat table with a queue behind you is read the same way it would be anywhere.
Drinking
Makgeolli, soju and beer are sold openly on most festival grounds and drunk sitting on the ground, at tables, and while walking around. Drinking in public is legal and ordinary in Korea, and the availability genuinely surprises visitors from countries where it is not.
What is not ordinary is being visibly drunk in a family space in the afternoon. The tolerance you may have read about applies to late-night entertainment districts, not to a daytime festival with children running around it. The line is much closer to where it is at home than the open sale of alcohol suggests.
Two courtesies that get noticed:
- Receive a poured drink with two hands, especially from someone older. One hand supporting the other forearm counts.
- Pour for others rather than for yourself. Someone will fill your cup; fill theirs when it is empty.
Neither is expected of a visitor, which is exactly why doing it lands well.
Drink-driving enforcement in Korea is severe and the limit is low. If you drove to a festival, you are not drinking at it.
Shoes
Any raised wooden floor is a shoes-off space: a temple hall, a hanok interior, a traditional teahouse, an experience programme held in a heated room. The shoes lined up at the edge are the instruction, and there is usually a shelf or a rack beside them.
Wear socks you are willing to be seen in, and shoes you can get on and off without sitting down. Sitting on the floor is common in these spaces, and so is a queue of people behind you at the entrance.
Temples and ritual spaces
Many festivals include or sit beside a temple, and some are religious events with a tourist audience attached.
- Keep to the visitor paths and out of areas marked for practitioners.
- Do not point your feet at an altar when sitting.
- Silence your phone inside a hall, and do not photograph people praying.
- Walk around a stupa or shrine clockwise if you walk around it at all.
- Temple food offered to visitors is a gift, not a sample. Take what you will eat.
If you are unsure whether you are allowed somewhere, you almost certainly are not, and nobody will mind you asking.
Queues and lines
Queueing is orderly and people leave real gaps, which occasionally makes a queue look like a loose crowd. Cutting a food stall line is noticed immediately.
At popular experience booths the queue may be for a numbered ticket rather than for the activity itself, and the activity happens at a stated time later. Ask before standing for twenty minutes in the wrong line — pointing at the front of the queue with a questioning look gets an answer.
Escalators, on the way in and out: stand right, walk left, though Korea is less rigid about this than Japan.
Money and tipping
Do not tip. Korea does not have a tipping culture, and offering money at a food stall creates confusion rather than goodwill. The price on the board is the price.
Hand money and cards with two hands or with one hand supporting the other. It is a small thing and it is what everyone around you does.
Haggling is not a thing at festival stalls. Prices are fixed and asking for a discount reads as odd rather than as bargaining.
Rubbish
Bins are fewer than you expect and are usually separated into food waste, recycling and general waste. Carrying your rubbish until you find the right bin is normal behaviour, and balancing it on top of a full one, or leaving it beside your seat, is the single most likely thing to get you spoken to by a stranger.
Many stalls take their own dishes back. If you were handed something on a real plate rather than in paper, look for where people are returning them.
Age, and why people ask how old you are
Within about a minute of a friendly conversation starting, someone may ask your age. This is not rudeness or small talk — Korean has different speech levels depending on relative age, and the question is the speaker working out how to address you.
The correct response is to answer it. You will then quite possibly be called older brother or older sister by someone slightly younger, which is a compliment and a form of warmth rather than a comment on how you look.
The same logic explains other small things you will see: the younger person pouring the drink, the younger person paying, the slight bow. None of it is expected from a visitor and all of it is noticed when a visitor does it.
Hanbok, and wearing it well
Many festivals rent hanbok, and wearing it is actively encouraged — some palaces and heritage sites waive admission for visitors in hanbok. There is no cultural offence in a foreign visitor wearing it; the opposite, if anything.
Two small courtesies. Wear it as it is meant to be worn rather than as a costume over your own clothes, and take the same care with it that you would with anything borrowed. Hanbok at a solemn ceremony is fine; treating a solemn ceremony as a photo backdrop is not, and that distinction is about the ceremony, not the clothes.
The general rule
Korean festivals are loud, crowded, friendly places, and foreign visitors are welcome at them. Nobody expects you to know any of this in advance.
Watch what the person next to you does for ten seconds and copy it. That covers almost everything in this guide, and the two things it does not cover — photographing faces without asking, and being drunk in a family space — are the two worth remembering on your own.
Questions worth asking
Can I photograph performers and other visitors at a Korean festival?
Performers on a stage, yes. Individual people, ask first — Korea takes portrait rights seriously and photographing strangers' faces without consent can cause a real problem.
Is it acceptable to drink alcohol at a festival?
Yes, makgeolli and beer are sold on most grounds. Public drunkenness is tolerated far less than the availability suggests.
Do I need to take my shoes off anywhere?
Yes — at temple halls, hanok interiors and any raised wooden floor. If you see shoes lined up at the edge, that is the line.
Is tipping expected at a festival stall?
No. Korea does not tip, and offering one at a food stall creates confusion rather than goodwill.
LAST UPDATED · Sep 8, 2026