South Korea Flies Thousands of Drones to Welcome the New Year

Illustration of drone flights in South Korea (photo: dock. unsplash)

JAKARTA – New Year celebrations are usually synonymous with fireworks, but not in South Korea. This developed country held a show of thousands of drones at Gwangalli Beach, Busan.

From the DroneDJ report, the Busan government is working with a drone show company to fly 2,000 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) at the turn of the year in a grand formation.

People in Busan and other cities are very enthusiastic about this show. About 40,000 people gathered at Gwangalli Beach to see the grandeur of the drone formation in person, while the rest booked hotel rooms on the beach to see the show.

However, thirty minutes before New Year's Day began, the show was canceled because the drone's flight communications equipment experienced a technical error. As a result, tens of thousands of people who had gathered were angry and expressed disappointment.

Initially, people watching were asked to return home, but seeing the response to the announcement, the government and company promised to fix the problem with the AUV they were going to fly.

Even though they weren't flown at the turn of the year, drones managed to make a show on Monday, January 1st. From videos shared by people there, the drones are seen flying in a square formation into the sky, then merging into one.

Apart from forming a cube formation, these drones also come together in a ball shape, then expand and look like a planetary formation. Subsequently, drones began to be upgraded to more complex formations such as heart shapes, dragons, and many others.

The drones also showed numbers for the countdown before forming a formation in the shape of the year 2024. As a form of welcoming the new year, the group of drones united and created the words Dreams Come True.

This show is quite short and only takes ten minutes. Even though it didn't go well at first, at least the people who came to Gwangalli Beach didn't go home disappointed.