We recently connected with Heoak Lee and have shared our conversation below.
Heoak, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
KoreaFest itself is a risk taking venture every year. The first festival in 2017 was a very low budget event and we didn’t know what to expect. We took a chance and produced the event and the response was overwhelming. Based on this success, we rented a 23,000 square feet venue for the second KoreaFest in 2018.
We had invested in the venue, staging, lighting, sound, tables, chairs, piping & draping and other necessary requirements from the venue so we had to sell tickets to cover the cost. However we had very little sponsorship and donations. This was a huge undertaking at the time with still so much unknown.
Subsequent events followed with each one of them being a risk, especially the last one in 2022.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
InWave is the 501(c)(3) non-profit that has been hosting KoreaFest since 2017 in Raleigh, North Carolina. Our annual event celebrated the 6th KoreaFest on November 19 & 20, 2022.
The vision to create KoreaFest started about 20 years ago. After moving to Raleigh in 1989, I started teaching and performing Korean Dance which became the foundation for KoreaFest. In 2017, the 1st Korean Festival in the state of North Carolina was born! Over the past 34 years of living in Raleigh, NC, everything that I did became an invaluable asset needed to pull off KoreaFest over the last 6 years.
Serving on the board of the United Arts Council and the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle gave me insights to the non-profit sector of the business. Also having been involved within the Korean American Community serving as the Board President for The Triangle Korean School and twice as an officer with the Greater Raleigh Area Korean Association, I gained knowledge of how the Korean organizations operate.
I taught and performed Korean dance with The Triangle Korean School for 18 years and 22 years with my own dance group, ‘Imperial Jewel”. During this time I served as the Korean Ethnic Chairperson for the International Festival of Raleigh. I personally organized and ran the food and the cultural booths for about 20 years.
All of these experiences, which includes all of the relationships that were formed along the way, is what really enabled me to put on KoreaFest. KoreaFest has become the signature event for InWave.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
I wanted to create a Korean cultural event for the non Korean speaking community. I felt that I could be the bridge between the 1st and the 2nd generation Korean Americans because the Korean American community tends to stay within their own. My experiences through the various performances and activities created the network needed to pursue this opportunity. Everything related to the non-profit centered around this goal of appealing to the non Korean speaking community.
I put together a board to start this organization and celebrating our 1st anniversary was the 2017 KoreaFest. Our website, social media sites, posters, board meetings and KoreaFest emceeing is all in English. In fact, all but one member of the board and the marketing team is Korean American.
Initially, I was hoping that more of the 2nd and 3rd generation Korean American to be in the audience but the event ended up taking on its own identity. Because of the fact that at the time we were basically the only Korean American organization that had a website in English, this made it the only one that people are able to find by google search. The 1st festival in 2017 brought in spectators from surrounding states who were non Koreans. We were totally blown away by the over 4,000 people that stopped by. Over the years we have consistently seen only about 2-3% Korean American attendees.
I am thrilled to see so much interest in Korean culture, Hallyu or the Korean Wave. Since last year, I have seen my goal take a full turn. The non Koreans who have been coming to KoreaFest over the years are now bringing the 2nd and 3rd generation Korean Americans. It’s crazy to see how everything is playing out!
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I took a huge leap in planning KoreaFest 2022. Going into a venue almost twice the size, and from a one day event to a two day event was a huge undertaking. I was overly ambitious with the end result putting the bank account in the negative. I managed to pay the bills using my private funds which took a toll on me mentally and emotionally. No one on the team including myself ever got compensated for putting on KoreaFest all these years and this is where I emphasize that this has truly been a passion driven effort.
Coming out of COVID 19, so I thought…. Still presented new challenges. Last summer, prices started going up on everything plus the labor shortages were everywhere. Going along this trend, we also raised the ticket prices. 3 weeks prior to the event date, I presented the NC State Fair with the layout drawings along with the items that I needed to rent from them. This was their process as it has been in the past.
Well, this time around I got a reply saying that the staging that I needed was not available. So with less than 3 weeks to go, I was scrambling to find enough staging for our event. Outsourcing the staging incurred additional cost. As a result, I had to rent the venue for one more day in order to accommodate the staging set up schedule at the last minute. I had reached out to the renters I had used to rent piping and draping only to find out they are now charging delivery fees.
There were many factors that were working against us that weekend. First, the World Cup Opening Ceremony was that Saturday. Second, during the Christmas Parade in Raleigh a parade participant was killed by a float that had a faulty break.
Some navigation systems took the address of the venue to another location, and parking was horrible due to large events taking place in the adjacent buildings. Lastly, China had gone back into a lockdown state which caused Chinese Americans to stay home. We unfortunately witnessed this same situation in 2020.
We will never know how much of these factors may have impacted the attendance and ticket sales.
However, the venue was set up beautifully. Everyone was happy with the staging and the LED screen next to the stage.The whole event was a high quality production that just didn’t bring in the income.
For several months afterwards, I lost the desire to work on another KoreaFest. I chose not to look at the bank account and to put all the numbers together. It took a little bit of time for me to pull myself together and for people around me to tell me that I have to continue because so many people are waiting for the next one.
In recent months, we have been able to get interns to form a marketing team and have started working towards increasing our followings on the social media sites. KoreaFest 2024 will be on March 23, 2024. We are going back to the smaller venue, Kerr Scott Building on the NC State Fairgrounds.
The audience’s favorite event on stage is the K-Pop Dance Contest. We have increased the first place prize money to $2,000! I am hopeful this will bring in more interest from all over the US.
Contact Info:
- Website: ncKoreaFest.com
- Instagram: @InWaveMovement
- Facebook: @InWaveMovement
- Linkedin: [email protected]
- TikTok :@InWaveMovement
Image Credits
Ayden Seo