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Jack Lee, wangjb77@gmail.com 

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) of South Korea (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism) announced that it will focus on fostering tourism products using "K-Culture," which refers to Korean culture and arts that are widely popular around the world.

MCST's strategy is to make the recent atmosphere in which K-culture fans around the world, who are enthusiastic about Korean culture and arts, have greatly increased their interest in traveling to Korea, lead to Korean tourism.

MCST expects overseas K-Pop fans to greatly increase demand for Korean tourism as the popularity of K-culture such as K-Pop, K-Drama, K-Movie, K-Game, K-Webtoon, and K-Arts is rapidly spreading beyond Asia to the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Africa.

▲Vice Minister Cho Yong-man of MCST

In the past, there were huge numbers of foreign tourists visiting major attractions in popular Korean dramas and movies. However, the number of foreign tourists has decreased significantly due to restrictions on overseas travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Considering this situation, MCST expressed its willingness to implement policies to further increase K-culture's enthusiasm and restore tourism income to pre-pandemic levels by turning K-culture into a tourism product.

MCST held a tourism industry forum at Lotte Hotel in Seoul on Wednesday under the theme of "2023 First Year to Become a Tourism Power, New Leap to K-Culture Convergence Tourism," and announced its plan to make this year a tourism powerhouse by utilizing the irreplaceable charm of K-Culture.

MCST declared 2023 as the "year of visiting Korea" and proposed a goal of surpassing 30 million foreign tourists and achieving $30 billion in tourism revenue by 2027.

Vice Minister Cho Yong-man of MCST said, "The number of overseas tourists, which reached 17.5 million in 2019, plunged 95% to 960,000 in 2021 in the aftermath of the pandemic, but increased to 3.19 million last year. In the future, if we make good tourism products using K-culture, we will be able to increase the number of overseas tourists to more than 10 million early.".

▲MCST's Park Bo-kyun is shaking hands after a meeting with the UAE government on K-culture exchanges between the two countries in November. / Captured by MCST official blog

Experts in the Korean culture and arts and tourism industry predicted, "One-time events such as concerts are good, but fostering landmarks of content consumed, such as dramas, movies, and entertainment, as tourist attractions will have a great effect on developing the tourism industry and enhancing K-culture popularity.".

Apart from the Korean government, local governments are also actively promoting the local tourism industry using K-culture. For example, the Seoul Metropolitan Government recently announced a business plan to create a "Star Forest" of global mega-hit K-Pop singers such as BTS and Black Pink in Nanji Hangang Park and develop it as a global tourist attraction.

▲Jungkook Forest in Hangang Park / Courtesy of BigHit Music

Starting with the creation of RM Forest No. 1 named after BTS leader RM in Jamsil Hangang Park in 2019, the Star Forest Project is located in a total of nine Hangang Park along the Han River, including Ichon Hangang Park (RM Forest No. 2), Jamsil Hangang Park (Jungkook Forest No. 3), and Gwangnaru Hangang Park (Yeongtak Forest).

The Seoul Metropolitan Government plans to promote the Star Forest as a favorite tourist attraction for global K-Pop fans by merging it on a 10,000㎡ site in Nanji Hangang Park.

An official from the Seoul Metropolitan Government said, "Han River is one of the representative landmarks in Seoul. In the future, the star forest will be fostered as a K-Pop tourism attraction in Seoul, frequented by hundreds of millions of K-Pop fans around the world."