The 4th Chinese Student Festival was held from September 12th to 14th in the Cheongju Arts Center. The festival, whose concept is Korea-China’s friendship, held various programs, such as a K-pop concert, a talk concert, and a global job fair. There was a good evaluation about the festival that it expanded interchange between Korea-China youths. However, there were also many problems in the festival.
  First, the Chinese Speaking Contest, which is one of the programs, had a controversy over contest examination. The subject of the contest was announced before the contest, but 3 contestants presented different subjects that were not related with the announced one. The problem occurred because examiners didn’t give any penalties but gave high scores to them. About this, other contestants raised an objection, but the examiners didn’t accept that, so there was a criticism that it was not a fair competition.
  Some programs were delayed. Because of that, there was discontent. Also, there weren’t many things to see in the festival, so most spectators spent their time by sitting and eating rather than looking around. Mao Jin Yan(’12, Dept. of Korean Language and Literature, Chungnam University), a Chinese student, who came from Daejeon to participate the festival, said, “I expected it would be a unique festival, but actually it was almost like the other general festivals that are centered around food.”
  Moreover, there was a criticism about the entire Chinese Student Festival. Kim Hye-jin(’13, Dept. of Mathematics Education, Chungbuk University) said, “The festival was for harmony between Korea and China. Then, shouldn’t treatment of Korean and Chinese be equal? Even in distribution of movie preview tickets, 70% were for Chinese. I think 50% to each country is fine.”
The problems that occurred this year should be solved by next year’s festival, and then it will be a better festival.

By Seo Yeo-ryung
yr34@cbnu.ac.kr