Abstract
The South Korean drama trilogy Lovers (2004-2006) features Prague in its second series; and Lovers in Prague (Peuraheui Yeonin, 2005) increased considerably Prague's popularity as a holiday destination among South Korean tourists. It creates an image of the Czech capital, alongside Paris featured in the first series (Lovers in Paris, 2004), as a site of romance.
Tourists are a specific group of city-users, with particular requirements, behaviours and expectations vis-a-vis the city and consequently, they construct what urban anthropology calls an "image of the city" (Raulin, 2007); which would be different from the city-dwellers' one. This paper will attempt to visualise the "image of the city" of Prague among South Korean tourists through mapping the sites and experiences they seek for while in the Czech capital and try to identify basic "model set" of such elements.
In order to do so, I will survey the tourism tips of the "must see" and "must do" in Prague on Korean social media, especially on Naver. Of course, noting that a certain degree of generalisation is needed to establish this "model" Korean image of Prague.
Based on my field experience from Paris, it appears that the social media tips can perpetuate a country/language-specific and even unorthodox "must see/do" lists which contribute to creation of a "specifically Korean" image of the city. I will attempt to see if there are such particularities to be found in Prague and if they can be linked to the drama Lovers in Prague, juxtaposing the city image creation and screen-tourism, or, if they, for instance, revolve strongly around the romantic imagery of Prague.
This paper could thus serve as a base study for future field research and comparison, especially in between the Korean image of the city of Prague and Paris, if the romantic imagery proves salient enough.