Korea woos Muslim tourists as their visits jump 20 pct a year
Photo credit: Amadeustx / Shutterstock.com
With just 35,000 Muslim residents and only a dozen or so mosques, South Korea seems like an unlikely halal hub but the East Asian country is making a strong push to attract Muslim tourists – and cater to those who want to enjoy a taste of Korea back home.
“The number of Muslim tourists [to Korea] has been steadily increasing by an average of 20 percent every year,” says Rya Yahaya, a manager in the Korea Tourism Organisation (KTO)’s Malaysia office. Approximately 900,000 Muslim tourists visited Korea in 2015 compared with 750,000 the previous year, a small percentage of the total 12 million foreign visitors to Korea in 2015.
In order to keep boosting Muslim tourist numbers, KTO is working to increase awareness of Islamic practices among Koreans and create a friendlier environment for Muslim tourists.
“It can be hard for [Muslim tourists] to find halal-certified local food products and restaurants, especially those that allow them to experience real Korean food, as well as places to pray, while travelling in Korea,” Yahaya says.
HALAL HELPERS
One of the tools KTO has developed to help is HalalKorea, a free English-language app that allows Muslim travellers to find nearby halal and vegetarian restaurants, determine prayer times, the nearest mosques, and the direction of the Kaaba according to their current location. It even has a function for scanning barcodes in supermarkets to see if products are halal-certified.
Other KTO initiatives include producing a restaurant guidebook for Muslim tourists, organising halal food festivals, and creating educational programs for Koreans on halal food and the needs of Muslim visitors.
THE KOREA ATTRACTION
The global success of Korean TV shows such as “Winter Sonata” and “My Love from the Star” is helping to drive international tourism, including Muslim visitors, as fans of those programmes seek out favourite filming locations in Korea, Yahaya says.
“The popularity of Korean dramas and K-pop [music] has also led to an increase in demand for Korean food and interest in experiencing the culture,” she adds.
Currently only about 150 companies in Korea have received halal certification for their food products, but the Korea Agro-Fisheries and Trade Corporation (aT) and the Korean Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs are working to increase that number, while also boosting halal exports.
CONNECTION WITH KEY ISLAMIC ECONOMIES
Last fall, aT opened a new Korea Agro-Trade Centre office in Abu Dhabi as a first step in implementing an agricultural cooperation agreement signed by the two countries earlier in the year.
“This [centre] will allow us to have awareness of the halal food industry and the certification system here [in Abu Dhabi],” South Korean Ambassador Kwon Hae-ryong said at the opening. “We are developing our halal food industry in Korea to then hopefully export agricultural produce.”
The Korean Muslim Federation, which provides halal certification domestically, has already synchronised its requirements with those of Malaysia in order to facilitate exports to that Muslim-majority country, one of the main sources of international tourism to Korea.
Similar synchronisation plans are in the works with the UAE, which imports 90 percent of its food, and with Indonesia, a country home to 220 million Muslims that already imports $193 million in agro-food products a year from Korea.
© Copyright SalaamGateway.com 2016
