Rob has written a well thought out piece on Korea’s almost constant seeking of some sort of brand for itself to promote to outsiders, but is always falling short because of it’s pigheadedness heavy handed approach(es)
Which is not to say there efforts aren’t well intentioned, and indeed the Travel in Korea’s (Is that the Korean Tourism Organisation – KTO??) attempt at an iPhone app is a good example of a balanced workable approach, albeit a little lacking in what is, the first iteration.
There are four separate apps available from the iTunes App store; Travel in Korea Metropolitan Areas, Travel in Korea Seoul, Travel in Korea Gyeonggi-do and Travel in Korea Gangwaon-do. (Search the app store). This post specifically looks at the Seoul version.
The Seoul version itself is separated further into North and south of the river and lists the places it covers in both the Gangbuk and Gangnam regions. Selecting one drills down to a further menu where you can view attractions by name:
The layout is clean and efficient for the iPhone and maintains the left to right User Interface element familiar to iPhone apps and web pages but is more colourful and not as sterile as the muted grey and blue of the standard iPhone UI palate. Choosing an attraction you are greeted by a brief description of your destination:
However few of the entries have any information o how to get there either by bus or Metro. Most places however have a website address but there is no click-thru to mobile Safari on the iPhone users having to remember a convoluted ~.go.kr address or presumably look it up on a PC and the same has to be said about the phone number. For an application on a phone you should really be able to call someone. You can’t even cut and paste these elements as the information is presented in HTML and text, rather it is an image file. Essentially the whole app is a glorified photo album.
That being said the images of various attractions and destinations in and around Seoul are pretty amazing looking on the iPhone’s screen and it is obvious that a great deal of work has been put into finding images that present these places in the best possible light. (No pun intended):
However where the app falls down the most is in providing a map for presumably tourists, to get to these places. The iPhone (and iPod Touch) takes great advantage of the Google Maps integration it has and GPS on the phone. The Travel in Korea Tourism App would be much better served by being able to bring up Google Maps from within the application to find a place rather than having users come up with this:
The most cluttered, lowest resolution map of Seoul in the world. which, in addition to it’s awkwardness can’t be zoomed in on.
Which is not to say that any of this can’t be improved in a subsequent 2.0 release. Admittedly these apps came out before Google had permission to use Korean mapping data, but even a clearer cached version of Google Maps like metro app Jihachul does, in an update would do wonders for this application and turn it into something more useful for tourists and expats alike. One of the things Google Maps on the iPhone lacks is the kind of Layers found in Google Earth and in it’s Android counterpart. An app providing some sort of Korean Tourism layer would be most useful indeed.
A good start but looking for those all important user iterations in a 2.0 Release.
Price: Free
Bimbo Rating: ★★ 2/5
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