YEOSU, South Jeolla Province ― The Yeosu Expo organizing committee is looking to technology to make visitors feel comfortable during their visit.

Committee officials said they plan to provide a multitude of cutting-edge IT-generated accommodations unprecedented by any pervious international events of a similar scale.

They said that smartphone apps, automatic reservation kiosks and radio frequency identification chips will make things easier and quicker for visitors time, while maximizing the fun.

“There has not been such a world exhibition,” Bang Chae-won, head of the Expo’s U-IT department, said to The Korea Herald. “Foreign visitors will find our self-service, technology-based facilities readily available in addition to the volunteers and other staff.”

Bang pointed out that language barriers can be a chronic problem for foreign visitors to international events. To help deal with this, there is a mobile app called “Expo 2012 Yeosu Korea ezTalky.” The app translates English, Chinese and Japanese into Korean and vice versa. “These things often can lack stability and perfection, but those are what we concentrated on the most.”

If visitors enter the app and type in “Where is the restroom?” in English, the corresponding Korean translation immediately shows up and is pronounced.

In addition to the translation app, the organizer also installed reservation kiosk machines in many places in the Expo, which allow people to reserve two events at a time in advance. The machine with a touch screen also shows the remaining waiting time so that people can spend the time enjoying other things.

The Expo’s U-IT department said, “When people attend this big of an event, they have to wait hours to check out just one place of many. That may make things easier for the organizer, but not the people who are standing in the line.”

Visitors cannot, however, sign up for specific time slots while making reservations through the machine. The policy is due to the organizer’s effort to prevent people from over-crowding a few popular time slots, the department said.

The Expo also adopted radio frequency identification in the tickets to automatically distinguish visitors and staff. The RFID employs a wireless non-contact system that uses radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to transfer data from a tag attached to the tickets.

Visitors also can find directions or spot their company with their smartphone apps in the Expo. They can even spot where their cars are parked by entering a related app and scanning the quick response code of that parking area. A quick response code is a type of black-and-white matrix barcode that resembles a labyrinth.

The Expo 2012 Yeosu Korea runs from May 12 to Aug. 12. Themed “The Living Ocean and Coast,” the Yeosu Expo is Korea’s second Expo, following the Daejeon Expo in 1993. CNN and Lonely Planet noted the Yeosu Expo as a must-see for visitors to Korea.

By Chung Joo-won (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)