Mokpo Harbor Festival is built around memory, but not everything at the festival belongs to the same kind of past. Some elements are clearly reconstructed. The Traditional Pasi zone and RETRO Wharf Street recreate the atmosphere of earlier fish markets and port neighborhoods, while the ‘Pasi: A Full Catch’ performance dramatizes a harbor scene for today’s audience. These are public interpretations of history, not direct windows into an unchanged past. Other elements sit closer to current working-port culture. The 2026 program includes live auction sessions involving Mokpo Fisheries Cooperative, seafood dining areas, fishermen’s groups and participatory games based on fishing, landing a catch and auctioning it. Even these activities are adapted for a festival audience, but they connect visitors to practices and institutions that still belong to contemporary maritime life. That distinction matters because Mokpo’s official tourism history emphasizes the city’s long role as a port opened in 1897 and as a center of trade, logistics and marine culture. The festival uses that history actively: it turns Pasi, auctions, food and harbor music into a way of narrating the city. For visitors, the most useful approach is to compare rather than collapse. Watch a reconstructed Pasi scene, then observe a current fisheries auction. Eat in the harbor food zones, but remember that festival menus are curated visitor experiences rather than a complete picture of everyday fishing livelihoods. The current 2026 information is unusually practical. The festival runs October 16-18 from 12:00 to 21:00 around Mokpo Harbor and Samhakdo, with some programs requiring advance registration and others allowing on-site participation. What the festival can show well is how a city chooses to make port history visible. What it cannot do on its own is prove that every recreated scene is historically exact or that festival performance represents the daily experience of today’s fishers.