지역이미지와 관광캐릭터의 관계

The Relation between Local Images and Tourism Characters: A Semiotic Analysis of Gyeongju City Characters

The fever of local cultural tourism as an attempt to activate local economy and culture using local cultural elements has been led to the movement to increase the effects of advertisement using characters. In this regard, it was attempted to investigate the issue from the aspect that in the use of characters to activate local tourism, there should be an understanding of characters that are visual language from fundamental aspects instead of blindly introducing characters 'just imitating others.' The purpose of the study based on the recognition of the necessity is to investigate the relation between local images and tourism characters as an attempt to have profound understanding of cultural tourism software. As a qualitative method, in particular, a semiotic method was adopted in the actual analysis of the meanings of tourism characters. The study results showed that tourism characters symbolically reflect local images. However, the character analysis revealed a problem and complementary points due to the weak or ambiguous symbolism between local images and tourism characters. Hence, the attractions and symbolism of tangible and intangible materials will need to be enhanced with efforts in resource maintenance and advertisement.