Andong Mask Dance Festival

Andong Mask Dance Festival is one of Korea's most celebrated cultural festivals, held each year in late September or early October in the city. Andong is the historical centre of Korean mask dance performance, and the festival brings together troupes from across Korea and international performers for ten days of outdoor performances, workshops, and demonstrations.

The performances draw on a tradition that dates to the Goryeo period (10th-14th centuries) and were originally used in shamanistic rites. The Hahoe mask dance, unique to Andong, uses wooden masks carved from alder wood — and the original masks from Hahoe village are designated National Treasures, with replicas used for performance. Even outside the festival period, mask dance performances are staged at Hahoe Folk Village on weekends, and the Andong Mask Museum in the city has an excellent collection of masks from across Korea and the rest of Asia.

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A story
The Andong mask dance tradition (Hahoe Byeolsingut Talnori) was originally performed every ten years as a village exorcism ritual, not as entertainment. The masks represented specific characters — a nobleman, a monk, a woman, a butcher — and the dances used physical comedy and transgression to mock the social hierarchy. Confucian scholars, who were the targets of some of the mockery, reportedly found this uncomfortable but were powerless to ban it.

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