The story
Jeju Fire Festival in Saebyeol Oreum/Jeju City
Jeju's Fire Festival turns bangae, an old agricultural practice of burning winter grass to clear pests from pastureland, into a public spectacle at Saebyeol Oreum, a volcanic cone once the site of a Goryeo-era battle against Mongolian forces. First held in the late 1990s and settled at its current site around 2000, the festival's centerpiece is a mass evening burning of the entire hillside.
Burning the winter grass on Jeju's volcanic slopes was, for generations, an ordinary piece of farm maintenance rather than any kind of public spectacle, a practice islanders called bangae, carried out between late winter and early spring to kill overwintering pests and clear the way for fresh growth on pastureland used to graze cattle and horses.