New Driver's License In Hand, Jeonju Woman To Choose Korean Tourism's New Slogan

(ht brian)
Rather than using market research, studies, test groups, or basic public relations and promotions fundamentals, the Korean Tourism Organization has found their perfect candidate to create Korea's new tourism slogan. Cha Sa-soon, a 68-year-old woman from Jonju, made international headlines passing her written driver's license on the 950th try, and now she will write the slogan that will make Korea a more attractive tourist destination than New York City combined.

Lee Charm, head of the Korean Tourism Organization, explained, "Ms. Cha exemplifies the great, fighting spirit of Koreans: never giving up, butting heads against the same wall until it crumbles, indomitable fighting spirit, and unwillingness to read directions carefully. Plus, she already has experience in the international media; it's just a small step sideways for her to go from CNN.com's "news of the weird" feature to the front page."

"We've been coming up with slogans for a while, and have been getting discouraged by criticism, and lack of results. Given that a low rate of success seems to be come with the territory in these promotions, we thought we'd hand the reins to someone who's accustomed to trying and trying and trying and trying and trying and trying and mostly failing, but sometimes achieving success."

Experts are praising the bold move by the Korean Tourism Organization. "Hiring one doggedly determined woman will be much more efficient and cost-effective than our other plans to improve tourism -- first of all, actually improving Korea as a tourist destination would be hard: keeping around those unsightly neighborhoods that have unique atmospheres of their own, without changing them so they look exactly the same as every other neighborhood in every city and town in Korea, well that's unfeasible. It would be expensive to restore those old neighborhoods, easier to replace them with glass and steel; it hurts our pride to leave Japanese colonial buildings untouched, and you know, we got all this neon sign material from China back in 1994 at such a bargain, of course we need to use it all. The idea of opening more hostels that are actually cheap, to attract backpackers, rather than gouging everyone at overpriced tourist motels... well, we want to TAKE their money, don't we? So that's out. Meanwhile, the amount of effort it would take to improve multilingual signage, coach hospitality workers in cultural sensitivity, and stigmatize the shouting of "Yankee Go Home!" and "You Russia?" at white people, and the shouting of "Go Home, Monkey!" to dark-skinned people would take work and time. We figure a real helluva slogan will accomplish the same effects. As for plan B, do you know the kind of manpower it would have taken to clean, feed, and house those billion monkeys we'd ordered from a dealer in India? To say nothing of finding a billion typewriters sturdy enough to withstand a monkey attempting to mate with it."

Nook-tu, one of the billion monkeys, was unperturbed by the lost opportunity. "I guess I'll have to go back to my old job, scavenging for nuts and fruit in the trees. I wasn't really looking forward to a desk job, but my mother-in-law thought it would be more stable with kids on the way."

Meanwhile, Cha Sa-soon, who does not speak English, has already started working on coming up with slogans. She's been pulling poetry fridge magnet words out of a satin bag all afternoon, and fastidiously copying down the results for her new employers. The thrilled lady says, "I've always wanted to be a civil servant, but I gave up that dream after failing the test 1754 times."

Tourism officials have already seen a few possible slogans that might be an improvement on "Korea, Sparkling,"

including:

Thresh mighty artichokes, Korea!
Korea Answer!
Land of the Morning Spoon
Abuse Sleep Most Find Who Korea!
Two Turn Fuck Zapan Korea!
Mill Idea Pie Very Land is Korea!

You can create a tourism Korea slogan, too: just go here and let us know what you come up with!