ITZY Avatar to Hold Fan Meeting at Virtual Hangang Park During Lunar New Year Holiday

Screenshot of ITZY's 'Feel the Rhythm of Virtual Korea' promotional video

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] To celebrate the Lunar New Year holiday, the K-pop girl group ITZY, who are also honorary ambassadors for Korean tourism, will promote Korea's tourism appeal to global fans through their avatars.

The Korea Tourism Organization announced on the 8th that it will hold a non-face-to-face Korean tourism promotion event using ITZY's avatars on the augmented reality 3D avatar platform 'ZEPETO' from this week until the Lunar New Year holiday.

This event is conducted in collaboration with Naver Z, the operator of ZEPETO, and the Korea Tourism Organization. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has made travel difficult and increased the number of people staying at home, this non-face-to-face Korean promotion marketing targets not only the global Gen Z, the main users of ZEPETO, but also the Hallyu fans attracted from ITZY's fandom. Additionally, the event draws attention by offering virtual activities specialized for the Lunar New Year holiday to visitors, creating interest.

A highlight of the event is the virtual Korean travel promotional video "Feel the Rhythm of Virtual Korea," featuring ITZY's 3D avatars. This approximately 30-second video delivers a message inviting viewers to visit the virtual travel destination Korea on ZEPETO, especially when direct visits are not possible due to COVID-19. It is produced in four languages: English, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and Japanese. The video will be available for viewing from the 9th on the Korea Tourism Organization's YouTube channel, its headquarters and overseas branch SNS accounts, and ZEPETO's SNS accounts.

The highlight is the fan meeting with ITZY avatars held for two days, from the 13th to the 14th during the Lunar New Year holiday, at the virtual Hangang Park. After watching the "Feel the Rhythm of Virtual Korea" video, fans and ITZY avatars will hold a fan selfie session and enjoy various virtual experiences in Hangang Park such as boating and skateboarding to conclude the event. In particular, to celebrate the Lunar New Year, ITZY avatars dressed in hanbok will offer a ‘reverse gift’ food truck where fans can experience eating traditional holiday foods like tteokguk (rice cake soup) and sikhye (sweet rice drink), which often appear in Korean dramas and are familiar to foreign fans.

Furthermore, the hanbok outfits that the ITZY avatars will wear on the day of the fan meeting will be decided by fans through a voting event called the ‘Hanbok Coordination Selection Event’ held from the 8th to the 12th. The Korea Tourism Organization expects this event to promote traditional hanbok to future key consumer groups and simultaneously serve as pre-promotion for the fan meeting by involving consumers directly.

ZEPETO, which has over 200 million users, has a particularly high overseas user ratio of over 90%, with teenagers making up about 80% of users. In November last year, the Korea Tourism Organization built a Hangang Park map on ZEPETO and conducted various promotional events targeting Gen Z. As a result, about 6.8 million people have visited the Hangang Park map to date, and user-created Korean tourism content has reached around 10,000 cases, making it a successful example of viral marketing.

Kim Yongjae, head of the Northeast Asia team at the Korea Tourism Organization, said, “Due to the impact of COVID-19 and the rise of Gen Z, virtual reality is now recognized as an essential marketing tool in the tourism sector.” He added, “Through digital transformation in future projects, we will enhance the efficiency of global Korean tourism promotion marketing.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.