A survey on "the successes and failures of Korean International Tourism Marketing."

A loyal reader and commentor on yesterday's post has passed this along:

I’m doing a study of the successes and failures of Korean International Tourism Marketing. I have a brief survey online that I invite you to take. It is designed to be answered by Korean/US bloggers and to give a slight outline of how these cross-cultural thinkers evaluate Korea’s International Marketing.

Go ahead and give it a try here; it takes about five minutes.

I'll postpone my comments on Korea's efforts to attract more tourists. I do know that I've been unimpressed with the cringe-worthy commercials that run on TV, even though they have been considered successful. What I do appreciate, though, is that each city and county has intuitive, informative webpages---the Korean-language ones, anyway---a contrast put into focus when I was recently trying to navigate my home state's webpage a little while ago.

One of the more humorous pastimes available us is to note the tourism slogans adopted by each city, county, and province. I just saw a commercial for "high 고흥, happy 고흥," and I know that I live in "Aha! Suncheon," also known as the "City of Beautiful People" when I'm there and "Korea's Ecological Capital." The best in the province belongs to Jangheung county: "Powerful Jumping . Green Jangheung!" The ones they use for Korea in general are quite ridiculous, so I've developed a few of my own.

* "Come to Korea! No, no, the other one."

* "Korea: So good we decided to make two."

* "We have Viking, we have bumper cars, we have so much fun here." (Um . . .)

* "Korea: In the middle of it all."

I actually like that last one, and it kind of hits on the (sorry) "Hub of Asia" stuff in that South Korea is in the middle of economic and tourism hotspots, and has adapted so quite a bit of foreign cultures over the . . . well, centuries. However, given the big push to brand Korea as unique in a bunch of different ways, I don't see Korea's proximity to other countries and cultures being referenced. Plus, I think it's taken. Anyway, I said as much in my comments on the survey, and would encourage you to leave your own. I think it's a guy's personal study, and nothing official, but who knows what may come of it.