"Visit Korea Year: 2010-2012" under construction?

The webpage is, at least. The new one will open on the 11th, though a foreign-language one won't open until January 1st, 2010.



You'll note that 2010-2012 isn't one year but rather a collection of three Visit Korea Year . . . s (한국방문의해). I first posted on this ridiculous use of English on October 21st, and turned some of the comments from the one-word post into a Joongang Ilbo compilation piece published yesterday. Chris in South Korea, meanwhile, had a good post about all the ways the website was a demonstration of how not to make a tourist site, including putting all the content in Korean, using Gibberlish slogans like "Green & Human," and making it inaccessible to people not using Internet Explorer.

Yonhap, the South Korean wire service, picked up on the conversation on my blog and translated the gist of it and some of the comments into Korean.

"한국의 1년은 외국과 달리 730일이 넘고 계절도 8개는 되나 보죠?"
정부가 '한국방문의 해' 사업에 따라 선보인 영문 로고 '2010-2012 Visit Korea Year'를 두고 한 원어민 누리꾼이 쓴 내용이다. 2010년부터 2012년까지 기간을 '1년(Year)'으로 표기해 단ㆍ복수를 중시하는 영문법상 틀린 말이란 얘기다.

한국을 대표하는 영어 관광홍보 로고가 이처럼 실제 고객층인 원어민들한테 '엉터리'로 지적되는 수모(?)를 당하고 있다.

26일 국내 거주 외국인들에 따르면 전남 여수의 한 원어민 영어 강사가 운영하는 블로그 '브라이언 인 전라남도(http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com)'엔 로고를 비판하는 영어 원어민들의 댓글이 20여개 달렸다.

On Monday the Korea Times had a piece about the launch of the "Visit Korea Year" campaign on November 11th; an excerpt:

An ambitious state campaign to attract more than 10 million tourists to Korea will be the main focus of the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) next year, KTO chief Lee Charm said, ahead of the campaign's official launching ceremony on Nov. 11 in Seoul.

``The underlining theme of all of our major projects will be the 2010-2012 Visit Korea Year' project,'' the KTO president said during a recent interview with The Korea Times. ``We will send promotional teams to Japan, China and Southeast Asia and will design hallyu events and festivals to disseminate our efforts.''

In an attempt to become a tourism superpower in Asia, Korea has launched a ``Visit Korea Year'' initiative once again. The last was held in 2001-2002 when Korea co-hosted the World Cup finals.

Although it talked a lot about competitiveness and attracting tourists, it didn't say a thing trying to attract stragglers from Japan's own "Visit Japan, 2010" (일본 방문의 해) campaign, and of course didn't point out the ridiculous use of English in the slogan. The main idea of the campaign, I suppose, is to highlight all the good things going on in 2010, 2011, and 2012, and that there are three year . . . s during which it'd be good to visit Korea. However, that doesn't explain the glaring error that it should actually be "Visit Korea Years." Really the whole campaign just looks like further evidence that English should not be used here without having it checked and double-checked by native speakers, and if it sounds extreme to nitpick over one letter, consider that the existence of such a slogan means that not a single English-speaking foreigner's advice was taken when unveiling an English-language slogan directed at foreigners. Please, back to the drawing board.

Thanks to commenter David tz for the tip.