Chungbuk Selected for 'Wellness Tourism Cluster' Two Years in a Row

[Asia Economy (Chungbuk) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] Chungbuk Province announced on the 26th that it has been selected for the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism's 'Wellness Tourism Cluster Project' for the second consecutive year.

With this project selection, the province will receive 400 million KRW in national funding. Wellness tourism is a new high value-added tourism industry sector that pursues health promotion and improved quality of life through tourism.

Since the 6th, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism conducted an overall evaluation of the project by a panel of five experts who visited wellness sites, and finally selected Chungbuk, Gyeongnam, and Gangwon as project target areas.

According to the selection results, the province plans to develop the two cities as representative domestic wellness tourism cities with the vision of ‘Rest (休), Healthier Rest and Recovery,’ focusing on ‘Lifestyle Meditation and Mind Healing Wellness Tourism’ centered on Chungju and ‘Oriental Medicine Care Wellness Tourism’ centered on Jecheon.

This year’s project will invest 400 million KRW each from national and local funds to intensively operate tourism products such as Chungju’s mind healing and meditation product (Deep Mountain Spring) and Jecheon’s oriental medicine detox immune activation product (Oriental Medicine Bio Promotion Foundation), while focusing on unified performance evaluation and establishing a systematic management foundation.

Additionally, the project plans to hold the ‘Body Rest Mind Rest Day’ and the ‘Chungbuk Wellness Tourism Grand Festival’ in conjunction with the Jecheon Oriental Medicine Bio Expo period, and to select local tourist sites as preliminary wellness tourism destinations to link them together.

According to the Global Wellness Institute, the global market size of the ‘wellness tourism’ sector in 2017 was 795 trillion KRW, accounting for 16.8% of total tourism expenditure.

Lee Seung-gi, Director of the Tourism and Aviation Division of the province, said, “Wellness tourism will be a new source of vitality for the travel industry struggling due to COVID-19,” adding, “Since our province is specialized in meditation and oriental medicine healing wellness tourism, we will ensure that Chungbuk Province becomes the best wellness tourism destination in Korea by linking it with local tourism.”