Vying for Guinness Book, draining local coffers

Posted on : 2011-08-05 14:03 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Attempts to set world records have produced expensive, nonfunctional items
 kettle
kettle

 sundial and post office box.
sundial and post office box.
 drum
drum
 earthenware bowl
earthenware bowl

 

By Oh Yoon-joo, Cheongju Correspondent 

 

The world’s biggest cooking kettle, built in North Chungcheong Province’s Goesan County with resident contributions, is being neglected under broiling summer heat.

The county built the cast-iron kettle in July 2005 at a cost of around 515 million won ($482,144), which included approximately 170 million won in resident contributions. Measuring 17.85 meters around, 5.68 meters across, and 2.2 meters in depth and weighing 43.5 tons, the county vaunts the kettle as the world’s largest. Efforts were initially made to have it listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, but abandoned after it was belatedly learned that a larger earthenware bowl exists in Australia.

The county opened up resident wallets by highlighting the possibility of cooking rice in the kettle during festivals and distributing it to the county’s roughly 38 thousand residents. But the kettle has never actually been used for cooking rice. It was used six times to steam corn, potatoes, and other dishes, and even those events stopped after 2007. Currently, it has devolved into a kind of folk belief fixture, where tourists toss coins inside to wish for good luck.

A massive wine bottle built by North Chungcheong’s Jecheon City in 2009 to promote the World Oriental Medicine Bio-Expo has also been lying idle in the festival venue after the conclusion of the event. The bottle measures 2.4 meters in height and 1.5 meters across.

The world’s largest drum, “Cheongo,” has been neglected since a single performance last year. The drum, built by Yeongdong County at a cost of around 230 million won, is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Ulsan’s Ulju County made a push last year for the Guinness listing of the world’s largest earthenware piece, specially made for the Ulsan World Onggi Expo, to face the danger of losing the 91 million won in Guinness registration costs after being defrauded by the registration agency. The Board of Audit and Inspection recently ruled the exposition’s management to be faulty, noting that its 23.5 billion won cost was more than double the initially budgeted 9.9 billion won, while its 2.3 billion won in revenues represented only 18 percent of the 12.4 billion won target.

Considerable amounts of money have also been invested in other “world’s most” pushes, including 185 million won to have the Saemangeum Seawall in North Jeolla’s Gunsan and Bunan declared the world‘s longest, 138 million won to have a sundial in Gangwon’s Yanggu County named the world’s biggest, and 36 million won to have a floor fountain in Busan’s Saha District ruled the world‘s largest.

“These attempts to attract attention with the ‘world’s biggest’ or ‘world’s most’ fixtures are a representative example of the kind of appearance-oriented and one-off administration efforts that need to disappear,” said Nam Gi-heon, administration studies professor of Chung Cheong University.

“We are in urgent need of the kind of administration that moves resident hearts through offering long-term policies and vision instead of hoodwinking them with surprise events at tremendous cost to taxpayers,” Nam said.

  

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]

 

 

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