The impact of Korean Wave on Korean tourism

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to prove the positive effect of Korea Wave on inbound tourism in Korea, especially the effect brought by the TV drama, and to estimate the inbound tourism demand by analyzing the effect of Korea Wave and other economic indicators, such as GDP and exchange rate. For these purposes, I examined the Korea Wave effect on tourism demand by using film-induced theory, which measures the change number of visitors visiting the film shooting scene. I choose Winter Sonata and Jewel in the Palace, two famous Korea TV drama, and collected the data about the number of people visiting the shooting place before and after the drama spread. Also, I examined the economic factors, GDP and exchange rate, and found out the relationship between these factors and inbound tourism demand. I choose China, Japan, Hong Kong(China) and the USA as the sample areas, and all the panel data on tourism demand, economic factors from 2005 to 2017 are collected to analysis. As a result, the number of people visiting the film shooting scene increases after the TV drama becomes famous, which shows the positive effect of Korea Wave on inbound tourism. Also, with the increasing export of Korea Culture, inbound tourism demand increases simultaneously. Moreover, not only Korea Wave but economic factors such as GDP and exchange rate also affect inbound tourism demand in Korea.