[Travel Big Data] What is the image of Seoul seen by foreigners and local Koreans?

What is the image of Seoul, the capital city of the Republic of Korea, with over 9,000 Korean and foreign visitors?

The Seoul Tourism Foundation conducted a survey on the image of Seoul from June 1 to June 24. A total of 9168 people participated in the survey, which was conducted through on-line and off-line for about three weeks.

When is the best time to come to Seoul during the life cycle?

77.4% of respondents answered ‘when they were young’. In the case of domestic respondents, 91.4% of respondents answered this question.

What time zone do you want to face in Seoul?

In the above question, 34.7% of the respondents said that they were in the evening. All languages have similar results. And the fact that shops are opening up to late hours and enjoying a lot of fun. In the evening, 27.7% and morning (22.4%) were the most followed by the afternoon (19.5%).

What is the best season in Seoul?

“Spring” was selected. More than 36% of respondents chose spring. The results differ slightly by language. The English respondents cited spring as the seasons of Seoul and seemed to have nothing to do with the interest in cherry blossoms. In fact, it was interested in Cherry Blossoms in April through Facebook, about 3 times more than usual. On the other hand, Chinese respondents and Koreans chose autumn. It is seen as a preference for autumn colors and clear weather.

What color match Seoul?

Pastel tones were the highest at 49.7%, but not much different from the second (42.8%). Respondents in English responded that the pastel, which is soft and delicate, is the color of Seoul. The people of Korea including China and Japan accepted the passionate energy of Seoul as the image of the primary color. There are also a few opinions. 13.4% of Korean respondents and 10.3% of Japanese respondents said Seoul is in black and white.

What is the musical genre that comes to mind in Seoul?

‘K-pop’ was overwhelmingly chosen. Especially, the K-pop selection rate of English respondents was overwhelming with 90.4%. The effect of K-pop seems to be big. Besides K-pop, classical music and rock are given as examples but it is far from the image of Seoul.

The survey on the image of Seoul was already done in the past, but this is the first time for an emotional approach targeting both domestic and foreign residents. Of the 9,066 valid respondents, 8,210 were foreigners and 856 were Koreans.