Popular Soap Opera Drives Japanese Tourism to Korea

In East Asia, the airline business is different. Gigantic planes crammed with seats upon seats whisk teeming masses of people from city to city on a rigid schedule -- when all is going well, it's more like a skyfaring tramline than anything Ernest K. Gann would recognize.

And then there are the soap opera charters.

You wouldn't have expected a Korean soap opera to be a huge hit in Japan. Unpleasant history hangs like a pall over relations between Japan and its one-time colony Korea. But "Winter Sonata," a serial love story that was picked up by Japan's NHK public-TV network, has won hearts all up and down the Japanese islands.

And now the Japanese fans, in true Japanese tourist style, want to aim their Nikons and Canons at the locations where the soap was filmed: Chuncheon city, Nami Island, and so forth. And KAL is going to make sure that they can. According to the Kyodo (Japan) and Yonhap (Korean) news agencies, the Korean flag carrier will run charters from January 9 through March 25. The charters will originate at Osaka and land in Yangyang International in the northern part of South Korea, a relatively short drive from the soap's tourist-magnet locations.

At least from the city website, Chuncheon looks like it's worth visiting. Nami Island is a particularly interesting destination. Man-made (at least as an island) when a dam caused the waters of the Bukhangang River to rise, it's named after an ancient Korean general whose tomb is on the island. Nowadays it is best known as a park with long paths popular with joggers, bikers, and, of course, lovers.

KAL manages 400 scheduled flights a day, as well as operating passenger and freight charter service. Not all its charters are frivolous -- the line's freighters have also moved disaster-relief supplies into the area devastated by the great Asian tsunami of 2004.

As far as the soap opera itself is concerned, we considered watching it here at ANN HQ. Only problem is, we can't make any more sense out of the Japanese subtitles than we can of the Korean dialogue.

But the people who understand it do like the show. Now, KAL will take them to the scene of the action -- almost like getting inside the TV.

FMI: www.koreanair.com/www.chuncheon.go.kr/Eng