“I could see firsthand the high potential that Korea has for the further development of its content industry,” said Pedro Jose Rojas Hernandez, a journalist from El Universal, a Venezuelan news agency. The newsman was one of a group of international journalists invited to Korea for five days to film specific aspects of the nation.

“Korea is one of the few countries that could achieve economic and social growth in such a short period of time,” he said. “When it comes to hardware, the nation has world-class skills and it’s expected that Korea will be able to develop its content industry more quickly, when some sort of cultural convergence takes place, I mean, when software meets with hardware.”

The Venezuelan journalist said, “As the nation’s businesses are well-equipped with social media platforms based on IT, the content sector here has great possibility for rapid growth in the years to come.”



The invited journalists, who arrived on July 17, visited royal palaces, the "K-Culture Valley," a venue that houses a concert hall and a theme park, the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, the Museum Kimchikan and the nation’s major news and broadcasting agencies. They will stay until July 23 and film many aspects of the nation, including the content industry, arts, traditions, the economy and society as a whole.



On July 21, the group visited the Taekwondowon in Muju-gun County, Jeollabuk-do Province, the world headquarters for the sport and which will host the 2017 Muju World Taekwondo Championships next year.

They were quite impressed by the scale and the high-quality nature of the facilities at the world’s leading taekwondo arena. They also expressed keen interest in whether or not there were any chances to participate in taekwondo training programs here, as well as in the upcoming taekwondo competition.

After they enjoyed the taekwondo demonstration, the journalists changed into taekwondo uniforms themselves and learned some of the more basic sets of moves. The crew from V News, a Vietnamese state-run news network, in particular, filmed one coach explaining in detail the basic taekwondo skills, as well as practitioners smashing apart a series of pine boards.

By Jeon Han, Sohn JiAe
Photos: Jeon Han
Korea.net Staff Writers Reporting from Seoul and Muju-gun
hanjeon@korea.kr