Seoul, June 17 : Tourism and Culture Minister Ambika Soni has released the first Korean-Hindi dictionary during her recent trip to attend the UNWTO executive council meeting.

The work on this dictionary started in 1994 and contains more than 50,000 main entries including 20,000 sub-entries with over 700 pages.

The Government of Republic of Korea and the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India have provided financial grant for this project.

The work has been undertaken by the faculty and the students of the Department of Hindi of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) and was coordinated by Professor Kim Woo Jo.

On the occasion, Lee Dong-won, a student of HUFS was awarded a return ticket for Seoul-Delhi, by the national air carrier of India for her valuable contribution in compilation of the dictionary.

Traditional Indian cultural performances were also showcased to commemorate the occasion.

Union Secretary of Tourism Shilabhadra Bannerjee has also launched an updated Korean website of Incredible India.

The website is tourist friendly and will serve the purpose of dissemination of tourist information in the Korean language.

Addressing representatives of tourism and travel industry from Korea on the occasion, Banerjee presented the latest initiatives undertaken by the Government of India in the tourism sector.

During his 45-minute interaction with more than 50 tour operators, discussions revolved around need of more Korean speaking guides, more hotel rooms, ayurveda and medical tourism, security for single travellers and visa facilities.

The Secretary called upon the tour operators to increase tourist traffic from South Korea to India.

The foreign tourist arrivals from Korea to India have increased by more than 56 per cent during the last three years.

Last year, the number of visas issued from Korea was 70,000. This year the target set is 1,00,000 tourists from the South Korean market.

At the end of the meeting, the Korean travel industry gave its assurance to fulfill this target and to continue with double-digit growth. (ANI)