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Red-Top Tour Guides a Hit with Tourists

The Seoul city government has been providing tour guides in red outfits to offer directions and other assistance to foreigners traveling in the city. The guides are fluent in English, Chinese or Japanese.

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Contrary to the common preconception of tour guides as being seated inside tourist information booths, they move around looking for foreign tourists who need assistance.

At present, a total of 72 have been posted in eight parts of the city, including the shopping districts of Myeong-dong, Itaewon and Dongdaemun. Of them, 32 speak Japanese, 24 are fluent in Chinese and 16 in English.

According to the guides, foreign tourists in Myeong-dong usually ask for directions to restaurants, coffee shops or stores that sell cosmetics, and they receive inquiries from up to 300 tourists each day.

During the cold winter days, the guides wear wool hats and long coats, and carry maps and travel brochures written in the three foreign languages. They work in teams of two and work in shifts of 30 to 60 minutes in their designated zones.

They say they have been seeing a greater number of individual tourists than group travelers recently, leading to an increase in the number of inquiries they field.

Clad in red, Seoul city's tour guides give directions to tourists in Myeong-dong, Seoul on Sunday.

Most of the guides agree that the most difficult question to answer is where the best restaurants are located. As they work for the city government, they are not allowed to recommend any particular store or brand.

"Japanese tourists usually plan ahead before coming to Korea and know which restaurants and stores they want to visit, so they just ask for directions", said one tour guide. "But Chinese tourists often want to know which place is famous, or which place sells good products, so we often have a hard time answering them".

The tour guides first hit the streets in 2009, when they assisted 170,000 foreign tourists. This number rose to 582,183 in 2010 and 958,994 last year. However, the total number of cases for which they provided assistance jumps to 1.3 million if local travelers are also counted.

"On weekends, half of the shoppers in Myeong-dong are foreigners, while on weekdays, almost all of them are foreign tourists", said an official at the Seoul city government.

"Judging by the influx of visitors packing the major streets of Seoul, it looks like the Korean Wave has given domestic tourism a huge boost".

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