Surrounding Seoul like a donut — Gyeonggi Province Deputy Governor: Fully Targeting the Taiwanese Market

▲Park Soo-young (sixth from left), Deputy Governor of Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, leads a team to Taiwan to promote tourism. (Photo / Reporter Chen Tzu-yin)

Reported by Chen Tzu-yin / Taipei

Park Soo-young, Deputy Governor of Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, and Hong Seung-pyo, President of Gyeonggi Tourism Organization, led a delegation of 11 local representative attraction operators including the Gyeonggi Convention & Exhibition Bureau, Petite France, and Korean Folk Village to Taiwan on the 16th to promote tourism. Park Soo-young stated, “We are fully committed to promoting the beauty of Gyeonggi Province in Taiwan and capturing the Taiwanese market.”

Park further noted that the number of mutual visits between Taiwanese and Korean tourists has been growing by over 20% annually, with around 210,000 Taiwanese visitors to Gyeonggi Province in 2014 alone. In response to the thriving Taiwan-Korea tourism market, Gyeonggi Province held MICE promotion briefings in Taipei and Kaohsiung on the 16th and 17th respectively, and visited local travel agencies to introduce Gyeonggi’s tourism resources.

Gyeonggi Province is like New Taipei City in Taiwan, forming a “donut” that encircles Seoul, with travel times from Seoul to various cities in Gyeonggi of within about an hour. Park explained that Taiwanese tourists interested in visiting Gyeonggi can plan trips according to the season — cherry blossoms in spring, water parks in summer, autumn foliage in fall, and skiing in winter. Alternatively, they can follow in the footsteps of K-drama filming locations, such as Running Man, which filmed at Vanilla Island and Korean Folk Village, or the romantic scenes of My Love from the Star, which were shot at Petite France.