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Young Entrepreneur Pioneers Tourism Business for Foreigners

Shin Seung-hyun, CEO of Funtastic Korea, said she was inspired to start her own business after hearing about the travel needs of her many international friends.

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Funtastic Korea is a travel website for foreign visitors to Korea, and it offers a choice of over 400 tour programs in various languages including Korean, Chinese, English, Japanese, and Thai.

Its services range from selling discounted tickets to popular destinations such as Nami Island, Lotte World, and Everland amusement parks to offering various other tour programs. They include a visit to Gyeongbok Palace in hanbok or traditional Korean dress, a bar crawl in the trendy Hongik University area, a trip to long-established Korean restaurants and making one's own K-pop studio album and music videos.

She took a typical elite course, graduating from a top foreign language high school and then going on to Seoul National University, Korea's most prestigious university, where she studied business administration. She felt stifled by what was expected of her for the future: getting a high-paying job at a sought-after company, marrying at a suitable age and having a good family life.

She learned to think outside the box after spending a year as an exchange student at Kyushu University in Japan when she was a sophomore. "In Japan I had a chance to make friends with people from all over the world. I watched my friends freely pursuing their goals and constantly thinking 'outside the box'. I started to wonder whether what everybody else wants is really what I want", she said.

Shin wanted to work in the tourism industry, and was confident in foreign languages as she spent part of her elementary school years in the U.S. and majored in Chinese in high school. "I made a lot of foreign friends in Japan, and was able to make more as I tried to help exchange students coming to my school. Among my 1,500 friends on Facebook, 700 are international friends. I think I guided over 100 teams of foreign friends who visited Korea. Most of them loved seeing daily life in Korea, rather than being shuttled around famous tourist sites", she said.

Shin launched the Funtastic Korea website in June 2013. "At first, I focused on discovering good tour programs and put them on our website. Then I tried to help foreigners deal with difficulties they encounter in Korea. Ultimately, I would like Funtastic Korea to be a platform that provides all the necessary services that foreigners need when they travel or live in Korea".

Recently, she started Indiway, a global service that sells tour programs to Australia, Cambodia, Japan, Taiwan, the U.S., and Vietnam. "I strive to maintain our free, nomad spirit, even if the company continues to grow bigger and bigger".

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