By Charles Montgomery

Recently, the Korean Tourism Organization (KTO) launched a Web-based advertising campaign featuring the ``Korea, Sparkling Widget.

'' A ``widget'' is a small Internet-based application that can be attached to a blog or web page where it broadcasts information to all who view the sites. According to the KTO website, the Korea, Sparkling Widget provides ``a variety of information about Korea including updates on travel destinations, culture, history, daily life, shopping and more.

The widget will also provide Korean news and article updates through an RSS function, along with a clock and weather function, helping you learn everything you need to know about Korea. Now everyone will have the chance to experience Korea through the Korea Sparkling Widget.

Unfortunately, while the creation of such a widget, and the semi-viral campaign (using college students) to spread it were good ideas, the widget itself, and the target Web sites chosen for the widget, do not seem as well thought out. In fact, both seem to have been imagined in a vacuum, or certainly someplace where foreigners, the alleged target audience, were not given much, if any, input. This is clear both in the content of the widget and how it is being disseminated on the Web.

The widget alternates information about Korea (a good idea) with a series of randomly displayed animated vignettes. I watched the widget for 20 minutes and was staggered by what I saw. The widget, putatively designed to intrigue foreigners, in fact presents them as dangerous and stupid boors, demonstrating that if they visit Korea, they will act like complete rubes, be laughed at by Koreans, be beaten and/or killed, and eat things that will make their heads explode into flames.

I watched some 24 vignettes during my viewing, and in 17 of them, Dave, the foreigner, was represented as a dangerous idiot who brings danger and shame wherever he goes. In one case he kicks a Korean in the testicles, in another he falls off of a ladder while hanging lanterns, is hit with a stick and pierced by an arrow and shocks an entire family of Koreans by entering their house with his shoes still on.

These are not messages that would appeal to any potential tourist. Rather, they paint Korea as a dangerous place full of potential social pitfalls. It's possible that these vignettes are meant to be humorous. If so, it's another mistake. How many countries with more successful culture-tourism campaigns use Three Stooges-type humor for self-promotion?

Few, if any.

The campaign to spread and popularize the widget also seems at least partially misguided. College students are contacting Internet users who maintain websites and blogs relating to Korea and Korean culture and asking these Internet users to place the widget on their sites. Even if 100 percent successful, it represents a case of preaching to the choir.

The administrators of these websites are, largely, already in Korea and already know and love the country. Similarly, the people who visit their websites are already aware of Korea. Thus, seeking placement of the widget on these sites seems unlikely to have much impact outside of Korea. It would seem more useful to attempt to place the widgets (after content re-design) on more international sites, such as those of travel agents, general travel blogs, or cultural sites.

The good news is that this represents an opportunity for the KTO. The initial idea was a good one. Creating a useful and interesting widget, and spreading it through a partially viral marketing campaign, was an inspired idea. Unfortunately, the widget as currently designed is unproductive, perhaps even destructive, and the target locations chosen for it do not seem chosen to maximize impact.

I hope that the KTO will go back to the drawing board on the widget, and this time involve some input from members of the target audience, perhaps even involving the same bloggers the KTO has targeted as potential hosts of it. The widget itself needs new content and the effort to place it on websites needs to be re-aimed.

There are many interesting and beautiful features of Korea that could be presented by it. Additionally, Koreans can be quite friendly and hospitable. It is these kinds of elements that Korea should put at the front and center of its culture-tourism marketing, not poorly-animated slapstick demonstrating what goes wrong when cultures collide.

The writer is an English Professor at Solbridge International Business School and Woosong University. He can be reached at cmontgomery@solbridge.ac.kr