The number of tourists visiting from South Korea reached 104,000 in the first quarter of the year, a 30 percent growth compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Bureau said last week.
The bureau has credited the growth of South Korean tourism to successful marketing through the South Korean television series On Air, a story on the entertainment industry in South Korea featuring Soong Yoon-ah and some other famous South Korean actors.
Wayne Liu (劉喜臨), director of the bureau’s international affairs, said its representative in Seoul learned that the crew of On Air had planned to shoot some of its outdoor scenes in another Asian country.
The representative then approached the director and tried to persuade the director to shoot some of the scenes in Taiwan.
Despite having several other options at hand, the crew eventually decided that they would use tourist attractions in Taiwan as the settings for On Air.
Six of the 20 episodes featured some of best-known scenic spots, including Taipei 101, the National Palace Museum, Jiufen (九份) in Taipei County, Taroko Gorge and Kenting.
Liu said the travel expenses were paid entirely by the crew. He said the bureau merely offered administrative assistance to the crew while they were shooting.
The bureau said in a statement that the television series was quite popular in South Korea, with the ratings of the last episode topping 25 percent on the day it was aired.
The bureau said that the first episode was broadcast in February and that since then many travel agencies in South Korea have received telephone calls inquiring about the scenic spots that appeared in the series.
The momentum built up by the On Air phenomenon has encouraged the bureau to join this year’s Korea World Travel Fair to introduce a series of activities scheduled for the 2008-2009 Travel Taiwan Year.
A group of Taiwanese hoteliers and travel agencies also joined the fair in Seoul, which ended yesterday.
South Korea’s tourism industry has not always focused much attention on Taiwan.
Direct flights by the national carriers of the two countries were even canceled at one point, following the termination of diplomatic relations in 1992.
Those flights were restored in 2004 and both domestic and overseas airliners have since provided direct flight services between Taipei and major cities in South Korea.
The bureau said that the number of trips by outbound South Korean travelers has topped 103 million annually, making it a target of other tourism bureaus around the world as well.
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