Many Korean signs displayed at Jeju Park are poorly written. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, April 29 (Korea Bizwire) — Hundreds of kilometers southeast from Indonesian capital Jakarta in West Java Province’s Tasikmalaya Regency stands Malaya Park.
While it has been open since March on a trial basis, the park is expected to hold its official opening next month.
Inside, a hanok village has been built in ‘Jeju Park’, where a number of traditional Korean houses have been built along with Korean-style gardens and K-pop streets.
How did Tasikmalaya Regency, a rural region home to some 600,000 people, become an unusual location for a Korean-style park?
Surprisingly, five creative staff from Malaya Park managed to build the Jeju Park in three months based on images and information gathered from Google searches. Not a single one of them has been to Korea before.
“We weren’t able to receive any expertise or consultation from Koreans and other experts as we built the park,” Malaya Park’s superintendent said.
“We want to fix what’s wrong before next month’s grand opening. We want to tell visitors about South Korea.”
In fact, many Korean signs displayed at Jeju Park are poorly written. Since the staff had to rely solely on Google to collect ‘what looks nice’, some inscriptions on the signs were either incomprehensible or almost unrecognizable.
Korean Cultural Center Indonesia head Kim Yong-woon recently visited the park as an advisor, and was amazed by the effort put in to establish the park.
“Some of the decorations at the park, including Chinese lanterns and Japanese cherry blossoms, did not symbolize Korea, so we decided to send them a list of revisions. We will also send proper images and photos to replace those they collected online,” Kim said.
H. M. Kang (hmkang@koreabizwire.com)
