Singaporean Tourists Drawn to South Korea's City Typology & Korean Wave - Essay Sample

Introduction

Tourism involves the activities where individuals travel to and stay in a place outside their typical environment for business, leisure, or any other purposes for not over one consecutive year. South Korea has experienced one of the popular tourist destination attractions in the region, referred to as the Korean Wave (Hallyu). The tourism activity in Seoul, South Korea, has a significant influence on Singaporean tourists. Individuals travel and stay in the region due to the city’s typology and Korean pop culture. Seoul city depicts the 6As of tourism to improve its popularity.

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Urban City Typology of Seoul, South Korea

Seoul is officially referred to as the Seoul Special City. It is the largest metropolis and the capital of South Korea. The city’s population is at 9.7 million individuals and represents the heart of the Seoul Capital Area with the surrounding Gyeonggi province and Incheon metropolis (Arcadis, 2015). It is perceived as a global city and the fourth-largest metropolitan economy in the world. The GDP of the city in 2014 was recorded as $635 billion (Arcadis, 2015). Seoul was also rated as the most livable city in Asia, where the GDP per capita was reported as $40000 (Arcadis, 2015). The city’s cost of living was ranked 6th across the world in 2017 (The Economist, 2017). The real estate of Seoul was also ranked third worldwide. It has major technology hubs in Digital Media City and Gangnam hence the home to the headquarters of 15 Fortune Global 500 firms such as LG, Samsung, and Hyundai (Arcadis, 2015). Seoul is strategically located along the Han River and is surrounded by a hilly and mountainous landscape. The Bukhan Mountain is situated on the city’s northern edge. Seoul city is considered the birthplace of Koran Wave and K-pop (Han, 2017). The city is characterized by a humid subtropical climate due to the monsoons. The climate is defined as humid continental and experiences a significant variation of precipitation across the year and facing warm to hot summer situations. Summers are hot and humid, with august as the hottest month recorded high and low temperatures of 32.6 and 23.4, respectively. Winters are found to be cold to freezing levels with January as the coldest month and high and low temperatures of 1.5 and -5.9 degrees Celsius, respectively.

Korean Wave and Korean Pop Culture

Korean Wave is also known as Hallyu and describes the international popularity of the cultural economy in South Korea exporting pop culture, music, entertainment, movies, and TV dramas (Kim, 2019; Malik, 2019). Pop culture is found out to have worked powerful magic in the country as it has turned South Korea among the coolest areas across the world. The emergence and success of the Korean Wave lead to the concern of how Singapore can get in n the act.

Hallyu began approximately 20 years ago and overtook Japanese pop that was popular starting from the 1980s to the early 1990s. The Korean Wave includes K-pop music and TV movies and dramas (Kim, 2019). It also extends into food, fashion, and beauty. The success of the Korean Wave had a considerable influence on South Korea both in boosting culture and enhancing the economy (Lim et al., 2016).

Singapore has the potential of grabbing a slice of the cultural cash cow since it has a multicultural and multi-ethnic society and enjoys innate exposure to Western influences (The Straits Times, 2016). Nevertheless, the country does not have its own entertainment culture. The best step to take is creating a countrywide awareness of Singapore pop culture (The Straits Times, 2016). It can also integrate other foreign elements to develop a culture content to be regarded as Singapore origin.

South Korea attracts tourists from across the world, with the majority coming from China and Japan (The Straits Times, 2016). Singapore also has a significant number of tourists visiting Seoul city every year due to the popular Korean Wave and K-pop culture (Kim, 2019). K dramas have witnessed increased attention due to their style, fashion, and culture across the world. Korean entertainment, such as K-pop, attracts tourists, especially from Singapore, into the country.

Types of Singaporeans Who Visit Seoul

Singapore nationals with ability to afford international travels usually book for flights to Seoul for tourism activities. They usually target the events and culture offered in Seoul such as K-pop. Besides, Singaporeans may travel to Seoul for business trips and conferences in the region. government officials and agencies visit Seoul for national matters. Other individuals visit the place for religious purposes.

Six As of Tourism

Tourist destinations include a mix of tourism experiences, products, and intangible items where promotion targets the consumers. Generally, destination concept is created to represent entities that are geographically defined, including a country, group of countries, regions in a country, or a resort. A destination is characterized by six components. A destination is, in most cases, regarded as an amalgam of six A’s. They include available packages, attractions, accessibility, activities, amenities, and ancillary services.

Accessibility: in destinations, access describes how easily visitors potentially get to the intended place. Accessibility may also refer to the infrastructure, ability to meet the needs of visitors with disabilities, wayfinding, ease of access to attractions, etc. (Tran et al., 2017). accessible tourism enables individuals with access requirements such as vision, mobility, cognitive dimensions of access, and hearing. It also allows visitors to function independently and with dignity and equity across their stay in the city. Seoul is witnessing changes since the majority of subway stations have public restrooms with handrails and wheelchair access, and elevators.

Attractions: Attractions depict wide differences among destinations, and it is important to identify the main attractors of a given city to ensure a compelling travel alternative for the target market (Tran et al., 2017). Attractors can be places, people, experiences, or things that attract visitors since they value the representation of the attractors. It is important to consider how attractors can be accessed by travelers. Seoul has numerous attractions, such as K-pop and the culture of the region. Other attractions include Seoul Tower, Bukchon Hanok Village, Cherry blossoms in front of Seoul Tower, Lotte World Tower, and the National Museum of Korea. It also has attractions including the Seoul Museum of Art, Gyeongbokgung, and Blue House.

Activities: The activities include the various experiences that visitors expect to receive when they visit the city (Tran et al., 2017). They also include what the visitors can do at the destination. The experiences include what they can walk away and share with their family and friends. Activities include emotions of the experiences visitors exhibit and how the experiences ultimately shape perceptions of visitors regarding the destinations. Seoul offers numerous activities such as day trips, fun and games, food, wine and nightlife, museums, among others.

Amenities: Amenities involves access to the necessary services and facilities that help the visitors feel secure and comfortable in the destination (Tran et al., 2017). It may refer to the pleasantness of a destination and play a crucial role in shaping the experience of the visitor. Seoul has improved amenities such as signage, restrooms, emergency services, connectivity, roads, postal facilities, sidewalks, and safe drinking water.

Ancillary services: Ancillary services include the extras that visitors are likely to require when they go on a business trip or holiday (Tran et al., 2017). For instance, a travel agency sells primary products, including flights and holidays, although it provides a wide range of ancillary services to offer a complete service for their clients and enables it to earn additional revenue. Seoul visitors can enjoy ancillary services, including tour guiding, luggage transportation, foreign exchange, theatre and event tickets, car hire, etc.

Available packages: Package tours include holidays or excursions that package numerous services together to achieve a single combined trip (Tran et al., 2017). Package tours in Seoul commonly combine accommodation, transport, and meals.

References

Arcadis. 2015. Sustainable Cities Index 2015. https://s3.amazonaws.com/arcadis-whitepaper/arcadis-sustainable-cities-index-report.pdf

Han, B., 2017. Korean Wave| K-pop in Latin America: transcultural fandom and digital mediation. International Journal of Communication, 11, p.20.

Kim, S.D., 2019. The Korean Wave. Transnational Media: Concepts and Cases, p.155.

Lim, W.X., Lim, T.W. and Ping, X., 2016. Korean Wave (Hallyu) in Singapore: Policy Implications Hallyu and Its Background—The Southeast Asian Context. In Globalization, Consumption and Popular Culture in East Asia (pp. 183-196).

Malik, S.I., 2019. The Korean Wave (Hallyu) and Its Cultural Translation by Fans in Qatar. International Journal of Communication, 13, p.18.

The Straits Times. 2016. How can Singapore learn from the success of Hallyu? https://www.straitstimes.com/business/takeaways-from-the-success-of-hallyu

The Economist. 2017. Worldwide Cost of Living Report 2017. https://www.eiu.com/public/topical_report.aspx?campaignid=WCOL2017

Tran, H.M., Huertas, A. and Moreno, A., 2017. 6: A new framework for the analysis of smart tourism destinations. A comparative case study of two Spanish destinations. DOI: 10.14198/Destinos-Turisticos-Inteligentes.2017.09