TUE AUG 23 05

		Bikini Amenity. At the beach in Byeonsan, South Korea -- now known as Byeonsan Bikini Beach -- the local government is trying to make sure the shoreline lives up to its name by offering a 10 percent discount at retail to anyone who shows up in a Bikini, reports Norimitsu Onishi in The New York Times. About 38 of the 45 restaurants in the area are participating in the promotion, and the town fathers (presumably without consulting with its mothers) have added the Miss Byeonsan Bikini Contest (click at your own risk) as an additional incentive. It wasn't that anyone expected the locals to go skimpy; it was more the hope that maybe the Bikini gambit would attract a racier crowd from, say, Seoul. Right -- it's not working for Byeonsan. "A lot of women won't wear bikinis because they don't want to get sunburned," explains Choi En Jeong, who was, in fact, wearing a bikini but allowed that she hadn't yet cashed in on any discounts. Her boyfriend, Lee Woo Ho, meanwhile thinks he has a better idea: "I think it would have been better as a nude beach," he says. The bottom line, so to speak, is that maybe -- maybe -- ten percent of beachgoers are bikini'd. The men, it seems, are just as reluctant to buy into the idea as the women: "In reality, it's better for Korean men to wear Speedos because their legs tend to be short and it makes them look taller," says one observer, "But," he adds, "they tend to be shy." Gang Heung Ueon, a Buan County spokesman, says he's unconcerned that the bikini promotion seems to be falling flat: "It's a long-term goal," he says. Mr. Gang, along with other promoters of rural Korean tourism, is simply trying to create a "C.I." or "company identity" for his county. The word "amenity" is key to the task. "You look behind the times if you don't use it at least three times in a presentation," says Park Hyung Jae, a Namhae County spokesperson. Kind of like "accountability" here in the states. So, what does "amenity" mean? Mr. Park looked it up and "concluded that it meant 'regional, agricultural, environmentally friendly, pollution-free, primitive, natural, pure'." In other words, "bikinis." Meanwhile, over in Seocheon County, it meant "a dog-eating festival for lovers of the meat, which is considered a delicacy in Korea." That didn't work, either: "... Some pet-lovers opposed the idea and we dropped it," says Lee Jim Hee, a county official. Tim Manners, editor