Why am I not surprised?

[rosesnchaos]

Korea Least Attractive Tourist Spot

By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff ReporterKorea is one of the least attractive countries for tourism, but the average five-star hotel rate is one of the highest among Asian countries, Rep. Choi Gu-sik of the Grand National Party (GNP) said Tuesday

Comments

[dedalusj]

This is the very definition of "not surprising." I really like living in Korea but I have never met a tourist in all my time here and short of visiting someone I have no idea why any one would want to come here to visit.

I am surprised that Malaysia is not higher. Singapore is crowded and expensive, what is it doing to high up? Malaysia is a place I really want to visit. It is warm, has interesting jungles, a lot of people speak English and it has the very international and cosmopolitan Kuala Lumpur. It is next on the list of countries I intend on going to.

[rosesnchaos]

Ooh if you do come over, do make a stopover in Kuching (East Malaysia on Borneo island). We'rer not as cosmo as KL, but we do have our small city charm. ^^ I can bring you around for local food-tasting. Hehe.

[dedalusj]

I would be honored. I like the cities but I find it is also nice to get off the beaten path every once and a while. I have a vacation after either Jan or Feb and Malaysia is on my list.^^ (Though I have done zero planning so far.)

[samedi]

Interesting. Two weeks ago I met a couple of tourists from Singapore, and the girl I stayed with in Taiwan was someone I met when she was a tourist in Korea. She's been here a couple of times, and I met a few other folks in Taiwan who said they'd visited Korea. During university I met a few international students from Hong Kong who had also traveled to Korea. I was a tourist back in 2002 as well.

It would be interesting to know what brings tourists to Korea though. My trip was to visit someone I knew, as was my Taiwanese friend's first trip. (Her second was to Jeju-do and she went with a Taiwanese tour group.) The girls from Singapore said they were here for sight-seeing and shopping, and if I ever asked the Hong Kong students why they came I've forgotten the answer.

Korea does a really poor job of advertising itself - at least to the West - which certainly doesn't help its prospects.

[bastblack]

"Medical tourism"? Does that mean "Cheap Plastic Surgery"? oO

[rosesnchaos]

Yeah. Presumably so. Apparently biggest clientele come from China and Japan.

[bastblack]

Costa Rico and/or Brazil seems to be growing "medical tourism" too.
Strange......

[rosesnchaos]

Oooh.. really?? Hmmm.. maybe ppl wanna look like those HAWT Latinos and Latinas?? Makes you wonder, if any of them are 'plastic' too. Wouldn't be too surprised either.

[samedi]

In the poll of 7,000 foreigners aged between 18 and 64 who are familiar with the country

I'm sorry, but this article is too vague for me to take it very seriously. What questions were the foreigners asked? Which country do they mean when they say "familiar with the country"? How do they determine whether someone is familiar with the country?

If they're asking foreigners "familiar" with Korea I'd imagine many of them have spent some time living in South Korea. From among this subset, the most common vacation spots I hear people talk about are Japan, Thailand, Singapore, and China. Funny how those all rank at the top of their list. If few people go to Malaysia or Taiwan I could see how they would rank lower down the list.

[ext_127723]

Well Korea is boring for me..... reminds me of korean dramas and serials, which is a very good avenue for korea to dramtically increase their tourism....

I think Korea without korean TV serials will be even lower in the ranking.

However, a survey of 7000 people is not a really good sample size. It is only a guideline.