MiYooMo campaigns for the island’s bid to become one of New Seven Wonders
A group of Koreans attending U.S. universities have composed a song with their foreign friends to promote Jeju island in its drive to be selected as one of the New Seven Wonders.
The song, currently available on the group’s website (www.miyoomo.com), describes the beauty of the tourist attraction with English lyrics and a light pop melody.
Kwon Jung-eun, a Berklee College of Music senior, composed the song, “Our Precious Gem, Jeju” and Kim Cheong, a freshman at the same college, wrote the lyrics.
Nine students ― three Korean, two Korean-American, two Japanese, one Chinese and one American ― sang the song.
MiYooMo, or the Korean Student Ambassadors for Innovative Volunteer Outreach, has made the song available as a free mp3 file on its homepage since March 30. The online gathering of Korean students in U.S. colleges and universities also designed a “Vote Jeju” logo early this month to provide it as a monitor wallpaper of smart phones.
Berklee College of Music students hold up “Vote Jeju” posters and logos at the college in Boston on March 29. They are (front row, from left) Jourdan Rystrom, Dong Ji-yoon, Kwon Jung-eun, (back row, from left) Ai Ichikawa, Kim Cheong, Lee Ki-na, and Erman Nuo. (MiYooMo)
The group has urged its 9,000 members to install the logo on their smartphones, as well as their Facebook or Twitter accounts.
The target audience of the Jeju song is Korean international students across the U.S., who MiYooMo hopes would encourage fellow students to vote Jeju in the Seven New Wonders poll.
“Students are the best publicity envoys as they are scattered throughout the world and communicate directly with local students,” MiYooMo leader Kim Seung-hwan told The Korea Herald via email. Kim is a graduate from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“Anyone from all over the world is invited to vote seven beautiful places out of 28 candidates. So, our promotion needs to reach foreigners as well as Koreans. We need to mount an eye-catching, fresh campaign to prod foreigners to choose Jeju.”
Out of many attractive sites in South Korea, Japan and China, only Jeju is left on the final list, so MiYooMo will seek participation from Japanese and Chinese students as well as Koreans.
The group is working on a music video for the song with the aid of its members who majored in graphic design, and plans to release it around the middle of this month.
“I am going to diversify our campaigns to draw as many as locals and foreigners in the U.S. to vote Jeju,” the MiYooMo leader said. “I hope our efforts will also play a part in raising the brand value of Korea.”
The world’s seven most attractive sites will be determined by phone (001-1588-7715) and internet (www.new7wonders.com/en) votes received until Nov. 10. The project is run by a Swiss non-profit foundation, the New7Wonders, which will announce the list on Nov. 11.
Jeju passed the first-round vote from 2007 to 2008, which had 440 candidates. The island passed the second round ballot in 2009 and the third and final stage of expert screening to line up 28 candidates.
MiYooMo was founded on May 22, 2000 on Cyworld, the Korean equivalent of Facebook. Its members represent more than 300 different schools across the U.S.
Earlier, the group created a song for the peace and stability of North Korea and Northeast Asia.
By Chun Sung-woo (
swchun@heraldcorp.com)