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October 06, 2009
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Yeongdong shelled out 230 million won ($193,890) in May for the drum, which is slated to be completed by the end of the year and to take its place in the pantheon of global icons. “The county has decided to make the world’s largest drum and to have it become a symbol of the village,” said Shin Sang-ho, a senior county official. About 70 tons of pine and leather from over 40 cows are being used to manufacture the 7.5-ton drum. A crane was brought in to help construct the massive instrument. Once construction is finished, Yeongdong will ask that the drum be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. Other local governments in South Chungcheong have also taken up the challenge to shoot for the record book. On Sept. 16, the city of Jecheon in the province established the country’s largest liquor bottle, which was 2.4 meters (7.8 feet) high and 1.5 meters thick. It sits at the site of an annual Jecheon Oriental Medicine Health Festival. Over 2,010 citizens and visitors lined up in front of the liquor bottle on that day to create gobon liquor, an oriental medicine elixir, by pouring in 2,010 bottles of soju and gobon, a medicinal herb. In Korea, gobon is thought to alleviate fever and soothe body pain. After the gobon liquor was made, the Korea Records Culture Center issued a certificate declaring the liquor bottle the biggest in the country. “We prepared for the event in order to introduce the oriental medicine liquor at the World Oriental Medicine-Bio Expo which is scheduled to be held in Jecheon next year,” said Mayor Eom Tae-young. However, not all efforts to get into the record books pay off. For instance, Goesan County in North Chungcheong completed an iron pot in July 2005 that it hoped would be listed by Guinness as a world record. The top of the 43.5-ton pot, which is 2.2 meters high, 5.68 wide, with a circumference of 17.85 meters, can only be opened with a crane. Some 500 million won was spent building the pot. But the big pot seemed star-crossed. First, it’s been used rarely. During an annual Red Pepper Festival in August 2005, 20,000 free ears of corn were boiled and distributed to residents and visitors. The festival had to give up trying to boil rice in the monster pot because no one could get it to boil correctly. Also, it proved quite difficult to scoop rice out of a two-meter-deep pot. To add insult to injury, the pot even failed to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records. It seems that there is an even larger one somewhere in Australia. The pot became useless, and the magistrate who was behind the scheme was voted out of office in 2006. But not everybody is giving up. “The county is trying to figure out how to make the pot useful and popular by making some 100 million won in refurbishments,” said Lee Kang-won, an official at the Goesan County office. By Kim Bang-hyun, Lee Min-yong [smartpower@joongang.co.kr] |
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