The Tourism Bureau premiered a TV commercial yesterday featuring the popular boy band F4, scheduled to be broadcast in Japan and Korea starting next month.
The 30-second TV spot is part of the bureau's aggressive marketing campaign to increase the number of Japanese and Korean tourists visiting Taiwan each year.
The story begins with a Japanese tourist receiving a letter from Taiwan, then shifts to four famous local scenic spots, which are visited by the F4 members.
PHOTO: LIAO CHEN-HUEI, TAIPEI TIMES
Jerry Yan (言承旭) appears in an exhibition room at the National Palace Museum, looking at Chinese calligraphy and then becoming one of the characters in an ancient painting.
Vanness Wu (吳建豪) is first seen playing with a lantern in Pingsi (平溪), Taipei County. Two seconds later, Taipei 101 is seen, amid exploding fireworks.
Ken Chu (
Meanwhile, Vic Chou (周渝民) is seen playing with a Taiwanese puppet, with the traditional art center in Ilan County in the background.
The bureau's director general Janice Lai (賴瑟珍) said yesterday that the commercial will appear on 14 TV stations in Japan and three in Korea.
Lai said that a TV series featuring F4 will also begin shooting next month. Based on the contract, the series will be broadcast by the end of this year.
Lai also confirmed that Yan will not be in the TV series due to prior obligations. While Chu and Chou are guaranteed to be in the series, Lai said the bureau was working to get Wu on board.
To Lai, the commercial was a gratifying experience.
"Many Japanese tourists are impressed by the snacks at the night markets, the fortune-tellers or the Hsiaolongbao [little steamed buns]," she said." What we are trying to create is a fresher image. Through the charm of these four people, we hope to give our guests a better understanding of Taiwan."
Besides the TV networks, the commercial will also feature on flights from Japan and Korea before they land in Taiwan.
The bureau is hoping to increase the number of Japanese tourists to 1.23 million and that of Koreans to 210,000 annually.
SECURITY: Starlink owner Elon Musk has taken pro-Beijing positions, and allowing pro-China companies to control Taiwan’s critical infrastructure is risky, a legislator said Starlink was reluctant to offer services in Taiwan because of the nation’s extremely high penetration rates in 4G and 5G services, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said yesterday. The ministry made the comments at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, which reviewed amendments to Article 36 of the Telecommunications Management Act (電信管理法). Article 36 bans foreigners from holding more than 49 percent of shares in public telecommunications networks, while shares foreigners directly and indirectly hold are also capped at 60 percent of the total, unless specified otherwise by law. The amendments, sponsored by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ko
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
RSS