High on Psy, South Korea lures tourists

Although South Korea has a number of tourist attractions, from the historical centres of its main cities, to some beautiful natural landmarks, romantic islands, top-notch festivals and popular beaches, it was thus far not very well known among people outside East Asia.

However, the sensational success of the 2012 pop song Gangnam Style by South Korean musician Psy changed all that, putting South Korea, Seoul and Gangnam on the map. The video became Youtube’s most watched and helped boost tourism to South Korea by 13.4 per cent last year.

“In fact, the video with the song has attracted a complete new audience to the country,” says German-born Lee Charm, president of the Korean Tourism Organisation. Not without reason, the homepage of the organisation features Psy’s portrait prominently, while the singer promotes “Korean style” around the world in a television commercial for Korea Tourism.

Charm also said that the organisation has set up a “Gangnam tour” for fans wanting to visit the well-heeled suburbs of Seoul with their high-end shopping malls, spas and music venues. For the most intrepid, dance academies offer courses in the popular music genre that has become popular as K-Pop (short for Korean pop).

Korean pop culture has engendered widespread curiosity about the country and was allegedly the reason — together with a newly launched direct British Airways flight from London to Seoul last December — that the number of UK visitors to South Korea surged by 10.6 per cent to 110,229 in 2012 over 2011, making it one of the five most important non-Asian tourist source markets. The others in 2012 were France, Germany, Italy and – the UAE, from where more than 10,000 visited.

To cater to this sizeable number of UAE tourists in business as well as in leisure, the Korea Tourism Organisation operates an office in Dubai’s World Trade Centre. As one of eight overseas offices of the organisation it promotes Korea’s distinctive culture, traditions and attractions in the UAE, to emphasise on the image of South Korea as a “holiday destination of choice,” says director Kim Bae Ho.

But there’s more than Gangnam Style to South Korea. Natural landmarks include the peaks of the Baekdudaegan mountain range, the sites of Danyang and Hwanseongul with its bamboo gardens and caves, as well as beaches such as Haeundae and Mallipo and the southernmost island of Jeju. The country is also known for its festivals, the most popular being the famous Boreyeong Mud Festival and the Cheongdo Bullfighting Festival.

However, its Chinese visitors who make up the lion’s share of tourists to South Korea. China has become the source more than 2.5 million of all tourists to South Korea in 2012, and a sizeable number of them are the affluent Chinese who aspire to have a wedding in South Korea and indulge in the amenities of its $15-billion wedding industry which is perceived by Chinese as fashionable and sophisticated, a must-do for the image-conscious Chinese jet set, of course driven by the new urban style exemplified by the Gangnam video.

However, not all are too much into Gangnam’s version of South Korea. “I would say that there is much more than Gangnam Style to experience in South Korea,” says Pratakorn Sisilap, sales assistant at the downtown Bangkok branch of the H.I.S travel agency that specialises on trips to South Korea. “For example, few know about the splendid Ginseng festivals in the country, and that there are a number of halal restaurants in Seoul,” she says.

“We also have many themed travel tours on offer, for example Taekwando tours, culinary tours, temple stays, cruising, trekking, hiking, eco-tourism and also nightlife tours,” she adds.

South Korea also wants to increase medical tourism, having gained a reputation for being the hot spot for plastic surgery in Asia. According to Seoul TouchUp, a government-approved medical and beauty tourism agency in Seoul, the South Korea Ministry of Health has set a target of 300,000 medical tourists to the nation by 2015, up from 80,000 in 2010. The agency is now heavily promoting special Korean beauty surgery practices.