Tourism office takes inspiration from 'Mad Max' for new promo video

A video of a group of tractors speeding in the mud fields in South Chungcheong's Seosan, reminiscent of the scenes in the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road, is trending online.

The Korea Tourism Organization unveiled a series of promotional videos earlier this month, and one on Seosan features locals riding tractors on a tidal flat. The scene is a parody of 2015 film ″Mad Max: Fury Road,″ and the video is titled Mudmax. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

A video of a group of tractors speeding in the mud fields in South Chungcheong’s Seosan, reminiscent of the scenes in the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road, is trending online.

The new video, nicknamed “Mud Max,” is the work of the Korea Tourism Organization, which has made a hit series of promotional videos introducing cities in Korea through a project titled “Feel the Rhythm of Korea” since last year.

The new video of Seosan, alongside seven others including North Gyeongsang’s Andong and Gangwon’s Gangneung, introduced a new series on Sept. 3. Out of eight videos posted earlier this month, the video of the tractors in Seosan with hip hop tunes playing in the background has been viewed over five million in the 10 days since its release.

Some of the comments on the video on YouTube read that its only flaw is that it’s too short — its about 90 seconds long — and that they are replaying it over and over again.

The six videos uploaded last year that were made in cities including Seoul, South Gyeongsang’s Mokpo and North Jeolla’s Jeonju have garnered about 290 million views so far.

The second batch of promotional videos were planned in March and filmed last month. The overall planning was the work of the Korea Tourism Organization. Advertising company HS AD took the charge of video production, while H1gher Music and AOMG produced the music.

The Korea Tourism Organization unveiled a series of promotional videos earlier this month, and one on Seosan features locals riding tractors on a tidal flat. The scene is a parody of 2015 film ″Mad Max: Fury Road,″ and the video is titled Mudmax. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

One of the goal's of the videos is to promote the tourism agency's own YouTube channel by creating viral videos. Through the second batch of videos, the company wanted to do more branding of local cities so that those who watch YouTube videos can associate Yangyang with surfing, for example. Hence, instead of showing major tourist’s destinations in the videos this time, it focuses more on the lifestyle of locals and visitors in the cities. The video for Seosan is all about tidal flats, while the video for Suncheon is all about the lives of the elderly in the rural area.

Some residents of the featured cities even star in the videos. For the video of Suncheon, all the people featured are locals. Some drive the tractors while others grill meat at the restaurants they own.

All the videos that have been produced so far are about 90 seconds in length as the creative teams felt videos longer than three minutes would not hold the attention of viewers.

BY BAEK JONG-HYUN [kjdculture@joongang.co.kr]