Goheung Yuja Day: How the 2025 Yuja Farmers’ Celebration Became Part of a Representative Jeonnam Festival

Goheung Yuja Day is best understood through the 2025 Goheung Yuja Festival, where “Yuja Farmers’ Day” appeared as one of the official festival programs. The 5th Goheung Yuja Festival was held from November 6 to 9, 2025, around 701-7 Handong-ri, Pungyang-myeon, Goheung-gun, Jeollanam-do, with Goheung-gun and the Goheung-gun Festival Committee listed as the operating bodies. ¹

If the phrase Goheung Yuja Ade first brings you into this topic, the festival offers the broader story behind that bright citrus flavor: not just a drink, but a local agricultural identity built around yuja farms, harvest culture, community booths, and visitor programs. By June 15, 2026, the 2025 festival had already passed, but its significance had grown further because the Goheung Yuja Festival was selected as a Jeollanam-do representative festival for the third consecutive year in 2026. ²

Goheung Yuja Day Inside the 2025 Festival

Goheung Yuja Day harvest programs 2025 Goheung Yuja Festival

The official tourism listing for the 5th Goheung Yuja Festival included Yuja Farmers’ Day alongside programs such as the Yuja C Concert, a yuja farm village street parade, Yuja Village “chon-cance,” Yuja Encore Week, a yuja auction, and yuja spa experiences. ¹ That lineup gives Goheung Yuja Day a clear role: it was not separated from the festival’s broader entertainment, food, and tourism appeal, but placed directly inside a celebration of growers, farms, and the local yuja landscape.

A pre-festival report also described farmer- and visitor-participation programs, including a Yuja Farmers’ Day street parade, a Saemgut performance, yuja picking, a yuja auction, and a fresh yuja eating contest. ³ Those details matter because they show the event was designed to be active and local rather than only observational. Visitors were not simply looking at yuja as a regional product; they were being invited into harvest-season rituals, farm-centered programming, and community-led activities.

The warmest way to read Goheung Yuja Day is as a bridge between producers and visitors. Yuja can appear in a glass as ade, in a jar as yuja-cheong, or in a festival booth as a hands-on ingredient. But at this event, the growers and the farming villages behind that flavor were also part of the story.

A Festival Built Around Farms, Flavor, and Participation

The 2025 festival opened on November 6 in the Handong-ri area of Pungyang-myeon and continued through November 9. The festival site was described as an area concentrated with 200,000 yuja trees, which gave the event a setting closely tied to the crop itself. ⁴

That setting helped make the festival more than a seasonal market. The reported program included more than 20 experience booths, with activities such as yuja natural soap, yuja terrariums, yuja pizza, yuja ramen tasting, and making yuja-cheong. It also included 40 sales booths. ⁴ For readers who know yuja mainly as a sweet-tart drink flavor, these booths show how widely Goheung positioned the fruit: as food, fragrance, craft material, local product, and travel experience.

Goheung County Mayor Gong Young-min described the festival atmosphere by saying, “In November, Goheung is colored by yuja fragrance and human warmth,” while inviting residents and visitors to the autumn festival. ⁴ The quote fits the event’s stated theme-like feeling: yuja was presented not only as an agricultural item, but as a reason for people to gather.

The harvest context also gives weight to the celebration. On November 20, 2025, Goheung-gun checked production and distribution conditions at the Duwon Nonghyup yuja purchasing site. The county planned to purchase about 7,880 tons of yuja, while 2025 production was expected to reach 8,770 tons. Field purchase prices were reported at an average of 4,500 to 5,000 won per kilogram, 13 to 15 percent higher than the previous year. ⁵

Those numbers help explain why a Yuja Farmers’ Day belongs inside the festival. It reflects a crop with measurable production volume, a harvest economy, and a community of growers whose work supports both local sales and visitor-facing experiences.

Why the 2026 Recognition Matters

The Goheung Yuja Festival’s story did not stop when the 2025 event ended. On January 13, 2026, Goheung-gun said the festival had been selected for the third straight year as a Jeollanam-do representative festival by the 2026 Jeollanam-do Festival Deliberation Committee. The festival received strong evaluations for content distinctiveness, organizational capacity, contribution to the local community, and safety management, and it was set to receive 30 million won in provincial funding. ²

The county also analyzed the 2025 festival’s direct economic effect at 27.5 billion won. ² For a local citrus festival, that figure points to a much larger role than a weekend outing. The festival functions as a platform for local growers, merchants, residents, and public officials to turn a regional specialty into a recognized cultural and economic event.

Mayor Gong Young-min called the three-year representative festival selection “a valuable result created together by yuja farmers, residents, merchants, and public officials.” ² That statement is especially relevant to Goheung Yuja Day because it places farmers at the center of the achievement, not just in the background.

There was also a 2026 program that kept the farm connection alive beyond festival season. Goheung-gun recruited participants for a yuja tree rental event in Yang-ri Village, Pungyang-myeon, allowing participants to choose their own yuja tree for one year, attach a name tag, and harvest from it during the harvest period. The rental price was 60,000 won per tree, and the program was also designated as a 2026 Goheung-gun Hometown Love Donation return gift. ⁶

2025 Goheung Yuja Festival representative Jeonnam festival atmosphere

Goheung Yuja Day, seen through the 2025 festival’s Yuja Farmers’ Day program, is ultimately a celebration of the people and places behind Goheung’s citrus identity. Whether someone arrives through curiosity about Goheung Yuja Ade, harvest events, or Jeollanam-do festivals, the source-backed picture is clear: Goheung used its yuja season to connect farms, visitors, local products, and community pride in one autumn event.