SEOUL — The Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) has launched a new Korean tourism brand ‘Imagine your Korea’ designed to attraction 20 million visitors a year.

The new brand emphasizes the ‘K’ in ‘Korea’ to symbolize a variety of resources that are offered in Korea such as K-food. KTO’s first vision statement, ‘Korea, Sparking’, was adopted in 2007.

‘Imagine your Korea’ is designed to promote the various charms of Korea in an effective and proactive manner to tourists. It reflects the improved global status of Korea through Korea’s beautiful natural environment, rich traditio and history, and it also portrays Korea as “a trendy and creative tourist destination that leads the global pop-culture.”

‘Imagine your Korea’ implicates self-discovery and experiences of such mentioned diverse aspects of Korea to foreign tourists while also keeping in mind the importance and value of personal experience.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism and the Korea Tourism Organization held an online contest titled, ‘Slogan Contest for Korea Tourism’ for three weeks, which began on Oct 18, 2013. Including the slogans submitted through the contest and slogans developed by the brand expert, more than 9,000 slogans were reviewed by an advisory committee and global surveys.

‘Imagine your Korea’ was chosen as the finalist.

The selected slogan design portrays energetic and dynamic aspects of Korea and a welcoming message to every foreign visitor. It illustrates one of Korea’s most representative colour combinations and a motif of a twirling sangmo (hat worn during traditional percussion quartet performance).

The ‘K’ of Korea is especially emphasized to that people can better understand and remember the slogan, and to symbolize diverse tourism resources, such as K-Wave, K-Food, and K-Style.

“Last year, the number of foreign visitors to Korea exceeded 12 million, which, in turn, served the opportunity for Korea to make a new leap to become an advanced tourism country, in name and in reality. Foreigners visit Korea not just because of physical accessibility and reasonable prices, but because of their desire to experience the latest trends, cuisine, culture and lifestyle of Korea. In short, the nature of tourism in Korea has changed. With the launching of the new brand, we can reinforce the global awareness that Korea is a creative country filled with the latest trends and sophisticated culture, thereby contributing to the opening of an era that welcomes 20 million foreign tourists,” stated president of KTO Choo Suk Byun.

The new brand will be promoted through the overseas offices of the Korea Tourism Organization.