SEOUL, South Korea, April 19, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The 184-day-long Suncheon Bay Garden exposition is scheduled to kick off the country's southern tip on Saturday to highlight the importance of sustainable development, the committee of the International Garden Exposition, the event's organizers said. The International Garden Exposition Suncheon Bay Korea 2013 will be held in Suncheon, 415 kilometers south of Seoul, from April 20 to October 20, under the theme of "Garden of the Earth". The opening ceremony will be held at the venue 5:00 p.m., Friday. "The city aims to be recognized as one of the world's top ecological areas after the event, as the six-month expo is anticipated to help transform Suncheon into a leader in the field of 'green-growing cities'," the organizers said.
The festival will offer a wide range of exhibition content through four major districts -- Arboretum Zone, Wetland Center Zone, World Garden Zone, and Wetland Zone -- in its venue of 1.11 million square meters.
The venue will include 83 types of gardens, including 11 sites boasting exotic views, as well as the ECOGEO Greenhouse, Suncheon Literary Museum and Suncheon Bay International Wetland Center.
"Suncheon Bay, located near the exhibition site with its size reaching 2.6 million square meters, is also anticipated to take a role as one of the major tourists' destinations during the six-month event," the organizers said.
In 2006, Suncheon Bay became South Korea's first coastal wetland to be registered with the Ramsar Convention, an intergovernmental treaty on the protection of wetlands.
The organizing committee added the exposition will host 93 different kinds of performances which will run 3,993 times in total during the event.
The Korea Rural Economic Institute said Suncheon will yield 1.3 trillion won (US$1.15 billion) worth of production inducement effects through the international event, and generate 11,000 jobs. Suncheon invested 245.5 billion won to host this year's event.
The city expects the number of attendees to break its goal of 4 million throughout the event, raking in 40 billion won just from admission fees.
