Abstract
The purpose of this study was to document a phenomenon of rural tourism in Korea by Investigating characteristics of 50 villages that had participated in a competition of 'stimulation of rural village' The results are as follows: 1) The degrees of activation of rural tourism varied according to marketing efforts made by individual provincial(local) government. The results of contest indicated that provinces such as Gangwon-do, Chungnam-do, and Gyunggi-do showed highest performance among other competing local governments; 2) The results revealed that the total profit generated from direct sale of farm products outnumbered profits gained from sales of lodging and foods. This indicated that there is a room for improvement with respect to boosting more sales on lodging and food; 3) The regression analysis indicated a significant relationship between profits earned from sales of experiential tourism product and those from direct sale of farm products(multi-correlation coefficient: 0.38); 4) It was identified that Gyunggi and Ganwon provinces were ranked first in sales of foods and those of lodging, respectively; 5) Finally, it was showed that among the 50 participating villages, only 16 ones hold festivals by means of attracting tourists from outside.