A poster to publicize Grand Korea Sale 2021, which gets under way virtually until Feb. 28.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) and Visit Korea Committee are jointly offering Grand Korea Sale 2021 virtually for 46 days from Jan. 14 to Feb. 28.

Korea Grand Sale is Korea’s representative culture and tourism festival for foreigners, offering Korea’s attractive tourism content and shopping benefits, and spurring tourism spending to help overcome the hardships of the tourism off-season.

Korea Grand Sale made its debut in 2011.

Korea Grand Sale 2021 is taking place online in accordance with steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 pandemic and to induce continued interest in Korea as a shopping tourism destination.

Korean Grand Sale 2021 comprises of an online experience to enjoy Korea’s attractive tourism content, an online shopping promotion involving a collection of popular items, and a program to pre-purchase Korea tourism opportunities in the post-COVID-19 pandemic.

Foreign participants’ hashtag events, dubbed “Share your Korea,” will be held to promote interest in the events.

Hallyu superstar Eric Nam appears on a opening-day key-note speech video as a guide of the festival to tell stories about Korea Grand Sale 2021. (Photos: Visit Korea Committee)

In the opening-day event, hallyu (Korean Wave) superstar Eric Nam made a keynote speech via video as a guide for the festival. He told stories about Korea Grand Sale 2021.

Major content of the festival, such as K-beauty, K-fashion, K-pop, and K-heritage as well as Eric Nam’s keynote video, were streamed through YouTube and tvN Asia during the promotion period.

Online class experience opportunities, departing from simply introducing Korean tourism content, are also offered.

Foreigners are allowed to participate in local area network (LAN) line class programs to learn K-content such as Korean cuisine, K-pop, K-beauty and Korea from Korean experts of each area. Participants are given discount coupons for the festival.

Online special shopping promotion programs are being operated during the period of the festival to help foreigners residing abroad buy Korea’s attractive products with ease and in a convenient fashion.

K-beauty, as well as K-food and K-pop goods enjoying popularity around the world, are discounted up to 60 percent.

The programs are being jointly promoted in cooperation with shopping platforms such as Gmarket and 11th Street to enhance shopping convenience, and lotteries are being held among buyers of the special shopping programs with an eye of inducing visits to Korea.

Korean tourism product pre-purchase promotion programs are offered in cooperation with flight, accommodation, culture, and experience product companies in areas, hit hardest by COVID-19 pandemic.

There are special sales promotion events to offer discounts to flights to Korea, departing from foreign countries and early sales promotion, major hotel’s giving discounts of a maximum of 80 percent plus an additional 8 percent discount, special product discount promotion events such as tourism and culture products to provincial areas, all designed to induce foreigners’ top priority visit to Korea as a tourism destination.

Foreign participants’ hashtag events, dubbed “Share your Korea” are taking place during the period of the festival.

They are designed to help global travelers post “My Korea, My K-content” on their own SNS channels to share and spread it with an eye of raising expectancy of traveling to and concern toward the nation.