This is cross-posted (but available in much-expanded form) at my blog.
ROK Drop just blogged this in, and this story about the drop in foreign tourism and the heat the mayor of Seoul is getting is almost funny, were it not so sad and predicable.
I’ve participated in paid surveys. I’ve participated in paid generation content for promoting the city. I’ve been paid to comb through the Seoul City Hall web site and look for things to fix. I’ve seen proposals by the city that were as dumb as dirt, but no one would just come out and say it. For me, here’s the simple answer, for which I don’t need a consultant fee:
ONE-SIDEDNESS
Korean slogans/campaigns/branding are so full of what Koreans want foreigners to see that they have absolutely no idea what aspects of the society/culture might actually be interesting to foreigners. Coupled with that, foreigners are almost never given any decision-making power in planning any of this, except for oodles spent to design one of the dumbest slogans and brands I have ever heard of. Since, umm, birth. Really. “Korea, Sparkling.” Let’s not hem and haw — we all know it’s stupid, and we knew it from Day 1. Everyone, that is, except for the Korean side.
NATIONALISM/사대주의
Koreans are generally so concerned with false notions of the “national image” that it handcuffs any attempts to show what is actually interesting about Korea. Relatedly, Koreans are so concerned with looking good to the “better” nations with high numbers of blue eyes and tall buildings that they forget what is good about their own society/culture.
MISUNDERSTANDING
Koreans planners fundamentally misunderstand “foreigners.” What “we” think about isn’t at all what most Koreans think “we” think about. For example, every time there’s a large-scale international event, the city tries to get rid of street vendors, because they think it makes Korean look “dirty” or “backwards.” That about the dumbest idea there is and a sign of how out-of-touch the city is.
“CHEESE”
There’s a reason this concept is hard to explain in Korean, except for nearby words (e.g. 진부하다 or 촌스럽다) that still miss the core of this very useful word in English. Cheesiness and melodrama and the very useful Konglish word “오바” (something being “overdone”) can play well in Korea, or at least not raise hackles. But sit a German or French sophisticate in front of a promotional video running on television with leaden, Big Brother (or alternatively, sultry-but-saccherine female) voiceovers, graphics whooshing in from all sides of the screen, and synthesized orchestra hits punctuated by superlative/hyperbolic phrases and descriptions such as “XXX-est in Asia” or “sparkling” and expect a roll of the eyes. This aesthetic is what many westerners have an allergy to, but to which Koreans and other Asian countries tend to have so high a tolerance that its actual existence is invisible. And this mode of hyperbolic-yet-vague-and-general mode of thinking/expression is built into the Korean language itself — anyone who translates from Korean to English knows this. (If you doubt, translate “우수한 우리 나라. 밝은 문화, 밝은 미래” into anything a Westerner might consume without wanting to upchuck.) Whether the fault of the language or modes of aesthetic expression, almost every promotional product made by a Korean organizational body is completely shot through with this “cheese aesthetic” — and it kills. But Koreans rarely notice it. It’s the difference between a bad stock photo image and a slick entry in the Absolut advertising campaign.
You put these together and what do you get?
This, from the “Korea, Sparkling” home page of www.KoreaSparkling.com, which makes you want to ask the question: “Did you get the internal PR and marketing guidelines memo when you filed your TPS Report?”
Was THAT the point of the “Korea, Sparkling” campaign?
Read the rest over at Scribblings of the Metropolitician. As you might imagine, there’s a LOT more over there.
10/10/2008 at 10:03 am Permalink
In my tiny little sea-side home of Halifax, Nova Scotia, there are a lot of pointless tourism ads like this.
Thing is, they’re not meant for people who come from away. They’re meant to convince the locals that Halifax is the place they want to be spending their hard earned vacation money, and to also convince everyone please stop running off to Alberta to find better paying jobs…
So these sparkling hub of Asia ads: Meant for the locals.
10/10/2008 at 2:48 pm Permalink
Agreed. But the campaign is ostensibly for attracting foreign tourists. Lotta money down the drain…
13/10/2008 at 12:21 am Permalink
CNN runs ads advertizing various places seeking outside investment. Notably Korea and America’s high five, Michigan. Michigan is a place that would bore the pants off of the average Seoulite. There are no mountains, but there are enough Soybean feilds to drown the population of Busan in DwenJang Jjigae. Michigan’s present and probable future seem dreadful compared to Korea’s. An article in Harper’s mentioned how parts of Detroit, were so run down that they were turning to prairie. Deer could be seen grazing in abandoned factories. Yet when it comes to marketing, this dreary American state that has less than half the population of Seoul gets its name out there like it was running for president. Seriously, I live in Jinju and I see a University of Michigan sweatshirt, at least once a week. I see at least 5 Detroit Tiger hats a day. Now I know that many of these people wear this apparal mindlessly, most likely not knowing the Detroit Lions from the Samsung Lions, but how often can you walk down the streets of Chigago and see a person wearing a Seoul national University sweatshirt? This is supposed to be Korea’s top sky school, but in terms of branding it can’t even compete with a non-Ivy league public school in the middle of a corn field. (Well Madonna and one of the google guys went to the U of M, but come on you get sooner or later after you get off of the plane in Korea someone asks you if you know about SNU, it would be an interesting survey to see about how many people say yes.)
What’s worse, some times when I go home and tell people that I was in Korea, people always ask me if I was in the North or South, and which one is the bad one. I read a piece in the Korea times. Some polititician was whining about how text books in Singapore portray Korea as still under a military dictator. It also talked about how other countries had some difficulties in potraying Korea accuratly. This isn’t surprising. Nobody is going to care about Korea unless someone makes them care about Korea. Unfortunatly the Korean government will just continue on passing off nonsense, and thinking that foreigners will come to Korea wanting to eat at Korea’s lovely Outback steakhouses, and then expecting them to leave as confucian scholars. One thing’s for sure though, more people in Korea have heard of the University of Michigan (though they think it is probably somwhere in L.A.) than people in America have heard of Seoul National University (If they have they probably heard about it when Hwang Woo Suk was famous.)
13/10/2008 at 6:09 pm Permalink
University of Michigan =/ Michigan (State of)
And Ann Arbor sure as hell doesn’t equal Detroit.
No doubt Michigan is a great school with impressive name recognition, but I can’t really follow the rest of your point.
Also, collegiate sports are a much bigger deal in America. To most Americans, U. of Michigan equals football team (who happen to suck this year).
I just think you’re throwing out some analogies that don’t really make sense.
13/10/2008 at 11:19 pm Permalink
Okay, U of M and Detroit are just examples, these are both just places in Michigan. The incredible sports merchandizing of A: The Detroit Tigers (A team that usually sucks) and B: The University of Michigan athletics, but I’ll stretch that a bit further, Michigan has things that out of staters like to call directional schools i.e. eastern, northern, central, and western Michigan universities. I have seen Korean people in Korea wearing Central Michigan University sweatshirts. I will admit that I was a little drunk when I wrote last nights post, but my point lies more with the fact that Korea doesn’t really put its national stamp in big obnoxious hangeul on things that it sends overseas. And maybe it should. Despite the percieved problems with American beef, I’ll bet you anything that there are American flags that adorn the packaging that say things like, “Grown with pride, or USDA certified Angus.” But back to the sweatshirt and hat thing. It doesn’t matter which state’s school or which baseball team’s hat you are talking about, you are likely to see more people mindlessly wearing these things on the street in Korea than you would see people in America wearing fashion with any sort of Korean message on it in. If you see the word “Florida” printed on a Burgandy shirt, you may not associate that with any place or with the University of Florida, but at least the word is out there. Likewise, I have yet to meet anyone wearing a shirt that has “Gangwondo,” written on it in big letters or big Hangeul. So in the last post I chose Michigan, because I’m from there, and because Jeff Daniels appears in CNN ads extolling the virtues the Michigan alternative energy industry (I think they look a bit desperate) much in the same way that Korea puts their sparkling Korea ads on CNN. The difference between the places though, are that individual American cities, states, sports teams, bars, rock bands, and Hanna Montana, all get their names into other country’s markets, when Rain is left dangling at the end of a tourism comercial, without any explination as to who he is, saying that he sparkles like Korea.
28/10/2008 at 4:09 pm Permalink
Yes, yes, yes! I was at a tourism convention on Jeju Island when they showcased this attempt to make South Korea out to be what it of course isn’t. As a tourism professor at a private school that I taught at, I was glad that I attended this convention that had so many foreign visitors. They would come up to me and ask me the questions that they would not ask the South Korea representatives. Like, “How long would you stay in South Korea – Jeju Island”? I said only 3 days in Jeju, but maybe 4-5 in South Korea as a whole and just focus on one area. Because if you have seen one temple you have seen them all….. These people were in the Travel Industry so they got it and they had been over to Asia many times… Thanks again for writing some good truth. I love the vendors and never shop for cloths in the high priced stores. They just don’t seem to get that we can do any of that “High Spending” stuff anywhere and at nicer places where it is great weather all year around. One last thing. The people from Singapore would come over to Jeju Island to enjoy the simple freedoms like spitting on the street and the laid back mentality of the island people…….. Seoul is all about shopping, but not in a store!
29/10/2008 at 2:42 pm Permalink
Did you just say, “if you’ve seen one temple you’ve seen them all”??? You’re not serious, are you?
31/10/2008 at 6:29 pm Permalink
Why yes, Gomushin Girl, I think he DID just say, “If you’ve seen one temple you’ve seen them all.”
What are you going to do about it?
02/11/2008 at 11:00 pm Permalink
I’m gonna drag him around to temples and explain in exquisite detail exactly how it is different from the other thousand some odd temples I’m going to force him to march around.
03/11/2008 at 12:21 am Permalink
(imagine dr. evil voice from Austin Powers)
“an EEEVIL tour guide?”
03/11/2008 at 1:02 pm Permalink
but of course!