Screen to reality: South Korea targets K-pop, K-drama tourism boom

Deep in South Korea’s hinterlands lies a supreme reproduction of 1900s Seoul: welcome to Sunshine Land, the most up-to-date K-drama theme park to profit from booming K-culture tourism.

Followers of K-pop mega team BTS contain prolonged flocked to the South to glimpse sites connected to the boy band, from the dorms where they slept as trainees to most up-to-date music video shoot locations.

But because the recognition of South Korean drama has soared out of the country — it is the most-viewed non-English whine on Netflix, the platform’s records displays — increasingly extra vacationers are planning trips round their popular displays.

The premise that foreign vacationers would pay honest correct money and drive hundreds of miles out of the capital Seoul to glimpse a K-drama map looked “crazy” to tour e-book Sophy Yoon — unless she saw one among her company ruin down in tears at Sunshine Land.

“At that 2d, it hit me: For me, it was as soon as honest correct a studio, however for them, it was as soon as something exceptional extra,” she said.

Preserved from the map of in vogue 2018 historical sequence “Mr Sunshine”, the map in Nonsan, 170 kilometres (106 miles) from Seoul, is replete with painstaking replicas of the entirety from a turn-of-the-century tram to South Korea’s most famed Buddhist bell.

“It’s worship after we recede to the Spanish steps in Rome where Audrey Hepburn had ice cream,” Yoon said, relating to the 1953 classic movie “Roman Vacation”.

For South Korea’s rising series of K-drama vacationers, “each and each door, each and each wall has a which manner from a drama that impacted their lives”.

“I salvage loads extra requests for explicit ‘K-drama tours’ now,” she said.

‘Felt upright’

The upward thrust of South Korea as a world cultural powerhouse “has contributed to the enchantment of Korean tourism,” said Kwak Jae-yeon, the Hallyu whine personnel director on the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO).

South Korea welcomed 1.4 million vacationers in September, up 33 percent yr-on-yr and the ideal since the pandemic, with bigger than a Third announcing they had determined to reach support “after being uncovered to Korean Wave whine”, in accordance to a 2023 KTO ballot.

In Seoul’s central Jongno district, vacationers worship Sookariyapa Kakij are standard. Carrying a hanbok, mature Korean robe, the 40-yr-ancient had travelled from Thailand namely to glimpse where her popular dramas had been filmed.

“I wish to hunt down locations where ‘Itaewon Class’ was as soon as shot,” she suggested AFP, relating to the appreciated 2020 drama, filmed largely on space in its namesake district of Seoul.

Jennifer Zelinski suggested AFP she had never left the united states sooner than, however after she found K-drama — thru the 2019 sequence “Wreck Touchdown on You” — while caught at home for the length of the pandemic, she determined to visit South Korea.

“I binged the entire demonstrate in per week. I barely slept and went thru two complete containers of tissues,” she said.

This “snowballed” into her staring at increasingly extra K-drama, Korean vary displays and paying consideration to K-pop, she said, unless lastly she “felt worship I in point of fact wanted to glimpse it in individual”.

“My family and chums had been insecure when I said I used to be as soon as travelling to Korea and on my contain,” said Zelinski, however for her “it honest correct felt upright.”

Past Seoul

The breeze replace is racing to procure up: one South Korean tour firm on the breeze platform Klook said interest in its BTS day tour has “skyrocketed” currently, and they also had been “fully booked unless next February.”

“We’re planning to add additional tours for diverse K-pop idol teams, including Seventeen and NCT 127,” they said.

But most of this fresh form of tourism is concentrated in Seoul, Jeong Ji-youn, a Kyungpook Nationwide College professor, suggested AFP.

Tourism in rural areas has tended to point of interest on extra mature Korean experiences, which is no longer any longer attention-grabbing to youthful travellers desirous to explore the land of K-pop and K-drama.

“There’s a favor to construct extra tourism resources connected to as a lot as date culture that allow of us to expertise hallyu out of doors of Seoul,” she said.

The port city of Pohang is higher identified for shipbuilding and metal vegetation than tourism, however Emma Brown, 30, from Scotland, travelled bigger than 8,800 kilometres (5,468 miles) to glimpse it as a result of “When the Camellia Blooms”.

The 2019 romance sequence “modified my life”, she suggested AFP, including that she felt she “needed to in point of fact feel the drama in individual.”

“I honest correct couldn’t miss the chance to visit Pohang when I used to be as soon as already in South Korea,” she added.

Provide: AFP