The 2019 DMZ Peace Festival will be held on June 29, 2019 in Paju, Korea.
The DMZ Peace Festival is jointly promoted by GCS International, headed by Dr. Chungwon Choue, who also serves as president of World Taekwondo, and the Kukmin Daily, one of Korea’s influential nationwide newspapers.
The inaugural event is organized by the DMZ Peace Festival Organizing Committee and Co. Act, a non-profit organization initially run by high school and college students in the United States.

Under the theme “Hand in Hand for Peace,” the one-day event is aimed to help support North Korean children suffering from tuberculosis and free taekwondo education for children in developing countries.

The festival will be composed of two parts: an official opening ceremony and various taekwondo performances at the Imjingak Peace (Pyeonghwa) Nuri Park in Paju, and an art exhibition along the electric fences of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) near the Peace Nuri Park. It takes about one hour by car to get to the Paju Peace Nuri Park from Seoul.

For taekwondo performances, the WT Taekwondo Demonstration Team will make a 25-minute performance, followed by a 20-minute performance by the GCS Global Peace Corps Taekwondo Demonstration Team. The organizers had planed a joint taekwondo demonstration by the Seoul-based World Taekwondo and the North Korea-based International Taekwondo Federation (ITF).
About 5,000 taekwondo practitioners from across the nation will make a flash mob performance, wishing for world peace.

For the art exhibition of the 2019 DMZ Peace Festival, Cooperation Act, a U.S. NGO, received about 500 art pieces, drawings and/or paintings, in a digital art file from participants outside of Korea. The topic of the art exhibition is world peace.

“This year marks the 40th anniversary of the founding of GCS International. We are pleased to work with the Kukmin Daily for the 2019 DMZ Peace Festival through which we want to show the world that taekwondo is a peace-loving Olympic sport,” said GCS International President Chungwon Choue. “Proceeds from the event will be used to help support North Korean children suffering from tuberculosis and free taekwondo education for children in developing countries.”