14 | November | 2011 | From Korea With Love

The New 7 Wonders of Nature

This past weekend, Jeju Island celebrated their win in being chosen as one of the provisional new 7 Wonders of Nature. The winners were announced on the New7Wonders Web site by Bernard Weber, founder and president of New7Wonders Foundation, from its headquarters in Zurich at 4:07 a.m. Korean time [source].

It is possible that there will be changes between the above provisional winners and the finally confirmed winners. The provisional winners were selected based on the first count of votes (a 2 year vote), and were chosen from 28 locations spanning the globe. Voting ended Friday (11/11/11) at 11:11 a.m GMT. The winners will be officially announced in 2012 [source].

When asked about the idea behind the New 7 Wonders, Bernard Weber said, “There are some places in the world where people can’t vote. We like to think that we can make a contribution by getting people to participate in democracy,” Fitzgerald said. Projects like the New 7 Wonders of Nature, he said, do that, and “help raise digital literacy.” [source]

The provisional winners are:

the Amazon in South America
Halong Bay, Vietnam
Iguazu Falls, Argentina and Brazil
Jeju
Komodo National Park, Indonesia
Puerto Princesa Underground River
the Philippines
Table Mountain, South Africa

Jeju Island

The Jeju Development Institute projects that there will be an increase of 73.6 percent in foreign tourists and 8.5 percent in Korean tourists. They predicts that the increase in tourism will boost the local economy by as $1.1 billion. Last year, 770,000 foreign tourists visited Jeju Island, just 8.8 percent of the number of foreign tourists who visited mainland Korea. [source]

What I loved abut visiting Jeju Island with the girls this past May, was seeing the Seongsan Ilchulbong peak. Jeju is beautiful. If you ever have a chance, go see it!

This is Seongsan Ilchulbong ( 성산일출봉 ), known in English as Sunrise Peak. It is over 100,000 years old, created by a volcanic eruption at the time.