ABSTRACT:

Experiencing "Authentic" Seoul: The Tourist Industry
and the Itinerary of Must-See Destinations
Hyung Il Pai (University of California, Santa Barbara)

This paper addresses the organization of the textual as well as visual narratives contained in first generation of Keijō travel guides in the context of the rise of colonial state sponsored urban development and the emergence of a modern tourist industry in East Asia. First, Keijō city guides produced in the early twentieth century are significant in the history of print journalism for they far surpassed any other colonial destinations in its diversity, quality, and sheer quantity due to the vast body of diverse data collected by specialists employed by the Colonial Government General Office of Chosen (GGC) or the Chōsen Sōtokufu) Education Department, the Research Department of the South Manchuria Railways Co. / Colonial Government Railways (CGR). By the 1920s, beautifully restored historical sites/ parks (Kyonghoeru, pagoda park, Namsan Shinto Shrine, Sajikdan and Chongmyo shrines, etc.) and antiquities/ fine arts collected in Colonial Government museums in Kyongboggung, Toksuggung, the newly built Botanical garden and zoo at Changgyongwon were advertised by the Japan Tourism Bureau (JTB) and the Korean Branch of the Imperial Railways Co. (CGR) as the must-see destinations in a wide variety or print media from passenger manuals, guidebooks, photo-albums, travel magezines, leaflets and postcards. Second, because of Keijo’s strategic location centered in the transportation, administrative and military hub of Japan’s rapidly expanding empire, the editors, journalists, and publishers worked hard to provide up-to-date, practical and accurate information on all local travel related enterprises such as railroad/steamers time-tables, tram-lines, taxi cos. hotels, inns, photographic studios, department stores, kisaeng restaurants, as well as the latest city maps, photos of major attractions and commodity prices. Third, urban guides for Keijo were consciously modeled after guides to New York and San Francisco, which had pioneered different strategies of organization and information systems in the nineteenth century (Michalski 2004). Selected for their navigability, arrangement, and design more than a century ago, urban guides have since served as an interface to the city and like databases were regarded as discovery tools to impart complex information environment. Therefore, by studying city guidebooks, one can understand the social dynamics of communication as well as participate in the way, the city is constructed in the minds of the people, both visiting and living within it.

Third, with the expansion of Japan's imperial travel industry into Manchuria, China and the Pacific, by the 1930s, Keijo was always included as a major regional destination and served as a traffic hub/ transfer terminal for group tour packages and businessmen much like Inch'on airport today. Therefore, travel information on Keijo produced by the JTB, SMR and CGR were printed in several languages targetting not only Japanese passengers but also foreigners including, English, German, and French. Therefore, postcards, time-tables, posters, and guides to Seoul were distributed at all major imperial railways stations, hotels, major department stores, JTB offices, and ports to citizens of «Naichi» not only in Japan but also the colonies to officials, businessmen, visiting royalty and foreign dignitaries as well as local subjects (school children and soldiers).

By taking a critical gaze at some of these widely circulated images of landmarks representing Seoul to a world audience in the Pre- War and Post-War periods (eg. South Gate, palace gardens, Seoul Railway Station, Hwangudan pavillion, Hangang Steel Bridge, Namsan Tower, Chosen Hotel, fortress walls), the paper will also discuss the pivotal role that tourist photography of famous places (Meisho) played in the manipulation and consumption of the Seoul «Brand» today. Since 2002, the Seoul Metropolitan Government, as part of a broader city-wide sponsored tourist campaign dubbed «Hi-Seoul» Soul of Asia, has recruited citizens input in designing ever-more symbolic markers including flowers, trees, birds (See homepage- http://www.seoul.go.kr/v2007/seoul/symbol/emblem.html.) to be placed at major city traffic junctions, subway stations and hotels. Currently, city officials, design teams, developers, and the Korean Tourism Organization (KTO) are cooperating to re-make the image of the city as the «Design Capital» in order to project itself as a 21st century metropolis hiring world famous architects to build high rise landmarks, luxury hotels, shopping malls, and theme parks in order to lure more international conventions (G 20), mega-sports events (World Cup), expositions and film festivals. At the same time, age old icons such as mythical creature of «Haech'i» framed by Kwangwha-mun Gate, colossal statues of national heroes such as King Sejong, the founder of Hangul alphabet and Yi Sun-shin, and fabricated folk village sets continue to be recycled as highly romanticized and exoticized visions of «Old Seoul» targeting the millions of foreign fans of Hallyu hit-dramas such as Jewel in the Palace, Jumong, and the King and I, etc. This paper demonstrates how Seoul's present identity crisis and profoundly anachronistic self-representations of the capital as the center of «time-less» 600 year –old Yi dynasty culture/traditions (which by the way has disappeared completely under the onslaught of modernization and industrialization), can be traced back to its colonial roots when Keijo was cast as the most «picturesque» and nostalgic destination in Asia by imperial Japan's tourist industry for profit and propaganda.

Hyung Il Pai received her Ph.d.from Harvard University majoring in Anthropology and East Asian Archaeology. She is an associate professor at the East Asian Department of Language and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara where she has taught courses on Korean archaeology, history, anthropology, popular culture, literature, East Asian traditions, and tourism in East Asia. She is the author of «Constructing Korean Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography and Racial Myth «( Harvard University Asia Center 2000). She is also the co-editor of «Nationalism and the Construction of Korean Identity» ( University of California, Berkeley East Asia Center Monograph Series 1998). She has also published in a wide range of international journals and contributed book chapters on a diverse range of topics ranging from Korean state formation, culture contact and change, archaeological heritage management, museum studies, photography, and cultural tourism in Korea and Japan. Her latest book entitled «Re-inventing Antiquity and Patrimony: The Politics of Heritage Management in Korea and Japan» is forthcoming with the University of Washington Press(Expected 2012).