Petite France (October 2015)

I presume most of us have encountered the story of the Little Prince. It was even released as a film animation just recently. Korea is probably one of the countries with a penchant for the fiction character. You can see countless of Little Prince merchandise in its stores — cups and saucers, pens and stationery — and they have a tourist village too!

This tourist site is technically named as “Petite France” or Little France. Korea aimed for it to look like a small French village in Chuncheon, where this attraction is located. Little Prince is used as the village mascot. Tourists will be able to see his statue or bust in almost every nook. If you personally travelled to France before, you can more or less affirm that Petite France is an inspiration of European architecture and culture. Later on, I will be posting about my travel in Gyeongju with my family, and you will see that Korea even has an Italian-inspired building similar to that of the Roman Colosseo.

The buildings of the village are very colorful, reminiscent of the villages on the Mediterranean coast. Tourists will be able to visit small merchandise stores and cultural exhibits, food establishments, and other recreational areas. Petite France strays from Korean tradition; the materials and decorations used are of European style and aesthetics. It almost feels like one is in another country the moment he is within the vicinity of the village.

My boyfriend and I entered some of the buildings to see what they have to offer. Two or three of the small spaces exhibit French and other European antique items. They contain exquisitely designed floral country vases, limoges and china, antique ceramic and porcelain figurines of various sizes, and orgels (music boxes) collected from different European countries. One of the locales even consists of a gallery of rooster paintings and sculptures! Based on my research, the Gallic rooster is an emblem of France as a nation. The rooster is apparently the symbol of the French national team.

Petite France has a memorial hall dedicated to Little Prince’s author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The hall displays the life of Saint-Exupéry and the writing process of the well-celebrated French novel. There is also a puppet play in a small stage built in the middle of the village. The marionette of France and guignol of Czech Republic are both performed onstage.

As previously mentioned, the architecture of the different structures in Petite France follows that of European villages. The buildings also have these small balconies and windows, reminiscent of those found in the French countryside. One of the buildings exhibit a traditional house, with its interiors, decorations, and appliances of French origin. Moreover, the village has a plaster art exhibition wherein visitors can produce and design plaster arts in the shapes of the Little Prince and the Eiffel Tower.

As my boyfriend and I’s schedule was a bit tight, there were a lot of activities we could not try or experience. More so, since the two of us are not in our childhood or teenage years anymore, we did not have that much interest in most of the activities. Nevertheless, our first time in Petite France was fun. It was like we left Korea for some hours to travel around Europe.