A South Korean woman in traditional dress performs a dance during a country festival in Daegu-myon near Gangjin in southwestern South Korea. (Associated Press/Ed Wray)

For centuries, the southwest corner of South Korea was a rural backwater, a place of exile for dissidents.

Some of the first Westerners to land on Korean soil -- a band of shipwrecked Dutch sailors -- were held captive here in the 17th century.

Even in modern times, South Korean powerholders considered the Jeolla region to be politically irrelevant, at times troublesome. In 1980, the military crushed a pro-democracy uprising in the southwest city of Gwangju. The region was the home base of Kim Dae-jung, an opposition figure who became president after the demise of authoritarian rule.

Today, South Korean tourism planners are showcasing southern Jeolla (pronounced choh-lah), hyping it as a haven for visitors who can soak up history, buy Chinese-inspired celadon pottery and spend the night in Spartan quarters at a Buddhist temple.

Officials in the region's Gangjin county are rebuilding a Yi Dynasty fort that was destroyed in a revolt. There are coasts and forests, tombs and Confucian shrines.

The campaign is part of a broader effort to promote South Korea in the wake of its wildly successful role as co-host of the 2002 World Cup soccer tournament. Attractions in China and Japan, fears of conflict with North Korea, and the South's focus on economic growth at the expense of aesthetics, have long sidelined South Korea as a tourist destination.

"Korea is frustrated at being unknown," said David Mason, an adviser to the South Korean government on tourism.

Still, Mason said "it's a lot better than it used to be," and cited the availability of tourist brochures in English in provincial cities, as well as paved roads all over the country. South Korea was far more inaccessible for foreigners when it hosted the 1988 Olympics, he said.

About 5.3 million people visited South Korea last year, many of them on business from Asian countries, but the government wants more Western tourists. Over the summer, President Roh Moo-hyun declared South Korea would be a "cultural super-nation" attracting more than 10 million tourists a year, on a level with Thailand.

With modest attractions and infrastructure, Jeolla's best hope for now is local tourism. But it has seized on Hendrik Hamel, a Dutch sailor who wrote about his experiences in Jeolla 350 years ago, as a potential draw.

Visitors can stroll down the low-walled alleys of Pyeongyong, a village where Hamel and his Dutch companions were held, and inspect an 800-year-old gingko tree where they gathered. As years passed, some married Koreans, made and sold wooden clogs and sang and danced to earn money.

A tourist puts on his shoes after early morning meditation at the Baeknyeong-Sa temple in Gangjin province. (Associated Press/Ed Wray)

After 13 years in Korea, Hamel escaped to Japan, and wrote a book on his return to the Netherlands. Some Korean history books gloss over his captivity, and the Dutch defence minister followed suit during a trip to Jeolla in July.

"He was a lucky man that he could live here in this beautiful country," the minister, Henk Kamp, said at a county fair while standing on a replica of the boat in which Hamel escaped. Kamp was in South Korea to attend ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the Korean War, in which a Dutch contingent fought.

North of Jeolla, the war has yielded one of South Korea's most popular tourist attractions: Panmunjom, the truce village in the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas. An estimated 150,000 people annually visit the southern side of Panmunjom to get a taste of the world's last Cold War frontier.

Mostly, though, tension with North Korea -- now at a height because of its suspected development of nuclear weapons -- disrupts the South's efforts to promote tourism. In 1994, the government in Seoul declared "Visit Korea Year," then watched its plans unravel when a North Korean negotiator threatened to turn Seoul into a "sea of fire" during an earlier nuclear crisis.

In 1998, South Korea launched cruise boat tours to a scenic North Korean mountain, but the project is mired in financial trouble and the scandals of its sponsor, the Hyundai business group.

A traditional South Korean drum band performs during a country festival in Daegu-myon near Gangjin in Southwestern South Korea. (Associated Press/Ed Wray)

Dho Young-shim, a former legislator who spearheads South Korean tourism planning, said much of the challenge is right at home.

"Koreans do not see the importance of tourism, they lean toward manufacturing goods," Dho said. "Tourism is not high on the list of Confucian priorities."

High on the list of tourist sites in Gangjin is a museum devoted to a famous Confucian scholar: Jeong Yak-yong, also known as Da-san, which means "Tea Mountain" in Korean. As an exile in the early 19th century, he espoused clean governance, agricultural innovations and other practical activities.

"Make a record of everything," said Da-san, who wrote 500 works.

IF YOU GO...

A tourist looks out on the fog shrouded valley below the Baeknyeong-Sa temple in Gangjin province. (Associated Press/Ed Wray)

Getting There: Gangjin is a 55-minute flight from Seoul, the South Korean capital.

Contact: For more information, call the Korea National Tourism Organization at (201) 585-0909 office in Fort Lee, N.J., or visit Jeolla on the Web. The Gangjin provincial office is at (011) 82-61-430-3228.