To Attract more Tourism, Bundang to Change Spelling to Poon-Tang

Municipal officials in the sattelite city of Bundang, south of Seoul, are catching onto the trend of re-spelling Korean things in order to make them more popular.  "We're really convinced that changing the spelling of Bundang will put it on every tourist map in the world," explains Min Sung-hoo, head of the Gyeonggi Municipal Promotions Committee.  "Changing the spelling to Poon-Tang makes the city's name more fun to pronounce: listen - poon tang! Poon Tang!  POON-TANG!'"  Min's shouting startled others eating in the cafe where Dokdo Is Ours was interviewing him.

Min also described the rigorous process of testing out the new name.  "The new name rated especially high with male interviewees: we surveyed about a hundred foreigners in and around Itaewon, and asked 'What do you think of Bundang?'"  Responses varied from "boring and over-priced" to "never heard of it," and "too new: no atmosphere.  Good shopping, though."  When asked, "What do you think of poon-tang?" the response was like night and day.  Female responses were somewhat more positive: "Not really my thing, but some people like it." or "A lot of guys I know don't care about anything else!" or "You followed me down the block to ask me THAT?" but the male interviewees were incredibly positive: "I love it!" "It's all I think about!" "It's why I came to Korea!" "I want it as often as I can have it!"  "I can't get enough."  "It's the main motivation for almost everything I do."  This indicates that the name Poon-Tang is a much better, more positive name than Bundang; we expect a huge increase in male tourists after the name change: I've heard before that every male English teacher comes to Korea looking for Poon-Tang".

Other agencies are also considering other spelling changes that are expected to improve foreigners' awareness or positive image, including:

Bibimbap: Pee Pee Poop
Soju: Sew Jew
To attract young tourists: Jeju-do will be Jeju d'oh!
Gunja district will be re-named "Ganja"
and Weidae University will be re-named "Weed, Eh?" both of which appealed strongly to Canadians.