My, what a pointy nose you have...

Japanese airline ANA has apologized for this commercial.


 (From here.)

 Fun stuff. Big noses are a staple of depictions of westerners in Korea as well.

A somewhat unsatisfying Samsung CF

Enjoy:



What's missing, I feel, is the ultimate conclusion to this guy stalking this girl ('Hey, I know we just met, but I secretly took not just photos of you but also video! Check it out!'), which would be later in the hotel room when (after he answers in the negative when she asks him 'Aren't you going to take the watch off?') he makes his own x-rated clip of her and spreads it on the internet, becoming a hot topic in Samsung-friendly news outlets in Korea (ie. all of them).


The comments are, to put it nicely, unsupportive of the ad, calling it 'creepy' and such. Come on, non-Koreans! Please try to understand that Korea is home to sayings, as James has noted, such as '"열번찍어 안넘이 가는 나무 없다," which roughly translates as "There is no tree that can withstand being chopped 10 times."' (Though, to be fair, this comment should be read in tandem with that quote.)

Still, one wonders if the old 'we know what foreigners want/like, so why the hell would we ask them their thoughts on our ad campaign' mindset played some role in this just plain bad ad.

My cup overfloweth

I saw this ad for Ocean World on the subway today:


The Korean could be translated as "have you reached the point of climax?" Though I imagine there's a better translation. With the crashing waves, cleavage and skin, and 'climax' in Korean as well, I'd guess the English phrase was chosen with the knowledge of its range of meanings. Then again, perhaps not.

There are apparently even larger billboards out there.

An in-depth look at the reaction to 'The True Origins of Pizza'

For those who would like to delve into the various reactions to 'The True Origins of Pizza' video by western, Korean, and Japanese netizens, I recommend the article The True Origins of Pizza: Irony, the Internet and East Asian Nationalisms by Stephen Epstein and Rumi Sakamoto published today at Japan Focus. I had been unaware of the Japanese reaction to the video - and I now realize I missed some of the references in the video, such as zig zag man. Seriously, though, some of the different interpretations of the video depending on the positions of the viewers are quite interesting; do give it a read.

(I should also thank them for mentioning this blog!)

The true origin of pizza

This is probably the best pizza commercial ever:



More videos related to this can be found here (and more commentary is here). There are lots of comments at youtube written by Koreans who clearly 'get it,' but there are also some from those who obviously don't understand that it's satire. Having recently read Hyung-il Pai's 'Constructing "Korean" Origins,' the bit about the archeological evidence made me laugh (as she argues that the use of archeology in Korean historiography has at times involved putting square pegs into round holes). At any rate, kudos to Mr. Pizza - it would be nice to see more like this.

Korea: The more you know...

This video has been appearing on CNN to promote Korea, and just appeared on Youtube in several languages yesterday:



I was told about this video awhile ago by someone who saw it before it was released, and who was less than glowing in her response to it (to say the least). It would seem it was edited slightly to remove the African jungle man from the crowd at the end (which might be for the best, as he might not be allowed to use public transportation anyways).

This video, on the other hand, is rather amusing:



"When a foreigner speaks to you, do you want to hide?"
(This is our country.)
"We (should) say hello first."

A busy week for 'racial threat' recruiter ads

Bizplace, who have posted three advertisements posing as 'articles' for recruiters Job and Consulting (1, 2, 3) has been busy this week and has two new offerings portraying foreign teachers as menaces to society. On Tuesday, they posted an article talking about foreign public school teachers, and had to this to say:

However local offices of education cannot hire English instructors directly. Therefore, finding ways to employ native speakers is also important. If a recruiting process based on accurate information is not complied with, one can easily hire an 'unqualified' native speaker who is illegal or who has provided false information. One cannot rule out the possibility of a serious crime being committed at any time.

At any time! The Naver search results are reusing the same pictures of blue-eyed western women; perhaps I could suggest a new logo for Job and Consulting?*


As if the above article wasn't enough, the next day another 'article' appeared which was obviously taking advantage of the case of the Korean American hagwon owner wanted for attempted murder in the states who was arrested Monday. The article was titled "When recruiting native speaking instructors, an 'FBI Criminal Record' check is required."

These days native speaking instructor-related crime is in the news. The news is reporting about various incidents related to foreign instructors involving drugs, assault and sexual assault. Recently there were news reports that a native speaking instructor wanted for attempted murder in the US used a fake degree and someone else's identity to pose as the owner of an elite hagwon in Gangnam for a staggering 14 years.

Due to reckless hiring of native speaking instructors, the hiring and recruiting of reputable native speaking instructors is coming to the fore as an increasingly important issue and social problem.

And they go on to say that only through a company like Job and Recruiting can one be sure that a proper FBI check is done when applying for an E-2 visa - even though everyone applying for said visa requires a federal criminal record check.

Send your resume into them before August 15 and receive a free bio-hazard armband with your visa!

Photo source

In response to this post, Benjamin Wagner wrote:

Surely a company this intent on preventing "a serious crime being committed" by someone who had no qualifications or connection to teaching but just "looked the part" wouldn't try to pull the same con by surfing the web for racial traits they thought symbolized linguistic competence for their gullible customers.

1: A, B.
2: A, B.
3: A, B, C.

These were found, he told me, by using TinEye, which also turned up many uses of the photo of what I assumed was an orientation, including this one (with a nice caption).

The company might consider using this or this on their site instead.

Only through us can we guarantee you blue-eyed non-criminals

And for the third week in a row (after this entry and this entry) Bizplace posted a nice advertisement vaguely disguised as an 'article' yesterday (it's listed as 'news' under a Naver search):

"Filtering through a specialized company's proven system" [when] hiring native speaking English instructors

Currently the number of native speaking English specialist instructors working in Korea has surpassed 25,000. Due to the demand for English education the number of native speaking English instructors is gradually increasing. However there have been not a few cases of some qualification-deficient instructors causing crimes like bringing in drugs or sex scandals. [...]

If one does not comply with the recruitment process based on accurate information, one could hire someone who is illegal or 'unqualified,' who has submitted false information, as a native speaking English instructor. The possibility of a serious crime being committed at any time cannot be ruled out. Therefore, in order to prevent such mistakes, there is increasing demand for a verification system for hiring native speaking instructors. Nevertheless, the truth is that it's not easy to distinguish good from bad [instructors]. [...]

Han Chang-gyun, spokesperson for the native speaking instructor recruiting company Job and Consulting (www.jobnco.com), advised that if you go through an approved agency which complies with legal E-2 issuing procedures when it comes time to hire an native speaking instructor, you can prevent the harm that could happen after [hiring] a unqualified or illegal sojourner.

The ending is quite similar to last week's edition:

Han Chang-gyun, spokesperson for the native speaking instructor recruiting company Job and Consulting (www.jobnco.com), advised that if you go through an government approved agency which complies with legal E-2 issuing procedures when it comes time to hire an native speaking instructor, you can be safe from harm [caused by] illegal native speaking instructors.

Which is similar to the week before that:

Lee Tae-u, head of the native speaking instructor recruiting company Job and Consulting (www.jobnco.com), advised, "Currently it's estimated that there are 25,000 native speaking instructors staying in Korea, and if you go through an agency which complies with legal employment procedures when it comes time to choose an native speaking instructor, you can thoroughly prevent the harm caused by illegal native speaking instructors.

Harm, harm, and more harm. They're certainly consistent. But yesterday's piece pushing things a bit further by saying "The possibility of a serious crime being committed at any time cannot be ruled out." Which makes sense, of course, because they're westerners. If I was to say such a thing about Koreans I'd - justifiably - be called a racist and asshole, but apparently doing so here - against westerners - is just good business sense. In fact, the day the first advertisement went up, Job&Consulting posted on their site a thank you to hagwon owners and school principals for their support and wrote that, "Currently we have requests for interviews and there are intensive reports in various news and media."

Oh, and the term translated as 'unqualified' was not the usual '무자격,' but rather '자격미달.' Here are the example sentences for 자격미달 given by Naver's online dictionary (click to enlarge):


I've seen the last sentence elsewhere on Naver's dictionary with 무자격 외국인강사 (unqualified foreign teachers) instead of the 'unqualified teachers' seen above. Times core, which provided the sentences, seems to be responsible for many such example sentences, but I'll save a closer look at that for another time.



As for the pictures of western women that appeared next to the stories in the Naver search results, it turns out the source of these is the Job&Consulting site itself, where the following photos are cycled through:

Close-ups of the women (and diploma), and shots from a distance (or behind) of the men. The banner version of the photos of two of the women focuses on one particular attribute:



No focus on certain racial attributes there, right?

They're also nice enough to provide contact information on their site, apparently for those who want to send them resumes.

Everything you need, all the time

From the first page of the December 6, 1990 Maeil Gyeongje:


"LG 25 is Born!
Now you can purchase all the things you need in life 24 hours a day."

According to the ad, the first store opened near Kyunghee University in Seoul.

As I mentioned here, the first convenience store in Korea was a 7-Eleven, which opened in May 1989. LG 25 has been GS 25 for five or six years now.

One thing I've noticed is that many stores come and go, but convenience stores tend to stay (though they may change franchise names). In Banghwa-dong I can only think of one (a Family Mart) that closed, but that was likely because there was a Buy the Way 15 meters away, and a 7-11 about 40 meters away.

Glory be to thy hallowed DNA

[Update: The Joongang Ilbo has an English-language editorial titled "Football may be in our girls’ DNA too."]


As we can see from yesterday's front page, the Maeil Gyeongje has let its readers in on why the South Korean team won the U-17 Women's World Cup:

Korean Women's DNA is Different
Out of only 345 women, 21 were picked, and in the end they did the job.
The splendid achievements in golf, figure skater Kim Yu-na, and the soccer Taegeuk Girls are connected.

Well now, I guess that may explain why Roboseyo "personally was told "foreign blood and Korean blood together has problems" [by] one of the nurses at a blood clinic[.]" It all makes sense now - Koreans' DNA is different. What a simple, obvious explanation.

Actually, while the article tells us that "Questions arise each time Korean female athletes accomplish great things on the world stage," it (sadly) does not follow up on the promise of the headline, instead dwelling on more mundane cultural and social influences. Mind you, the fact that "Korean women's DNA is different" was a headline on the front page of a newspaper should go to show that the idea of genes and bloodlines was dominating the writer (or editor)'s thinking, and that they figured others would agree.

Not that that should be all that surprising. It's interesting to note that as of a year ago, according to this, of the seven published sequences of individual human genomes in the world, two were from Korea, indicating a certain interest in the topic. As the introduction to this article in Nature by an SNU scientist states

"The integration of several human whole-genome sequences derived from several ethnic groups will assist in understanding genetic ancestry, migration patterns and population bottlenecks."

If I had to make a guess, "understanding genetic ancestry" will be at the top of the list; more on the history of the focus in Korea on bloodlines and race can be found here. Of course, as far as understanding genetic ancestry goes, it seems some Korean groups are more certain than others of where they come from, as this pamphlet given by a proselytizer to Ian Baruma during the 1988 Seoul Olympics (and related in his article, "Playing for Keeps") reveals:

To All Mankind!—We proclaim that the Republic of Korea is the country where mankind was first created and civilization was cradled, and the parental country of all mankind. All mankind now participating in the '88 Olympic Games! We advise you to realize the fact that the Republic of Korea having about 5000 year [sic] long history, is your parental country."

Well, there you go.

It's interesting to note the different uses in the media for genetic references. This article examines how the U.S. media overlooked Norway winning 27% of the medals at the 2010 Winter Olympics, and compared this to the reaction to Kenyan men taking home 27% of the running medals from the 2008 Olympics:

[A] key difference is that when Kenyan athletes fare extremely well the tabloid press erupts with the news that Kenyans probably possess the right genes for performance, that they are genetically superior to runners from the rest of the world. [...]

The Norwegians, of course, are a different story altogether. When they out-compete big-brother Russia to the east, garnering 50-percent more medals than their Russian counterparts (despite Russia’s population of 142 million), the lofty Norwegian performances are simply the result of discipline, hard work, scientific training, culture, and the unique Norse environment. While Russian heads roll, not a whisper is heard about Norwegian DNA.

The Kenyan genetic connection has been taken further with a study that concluded that the Kenyans had a born advantage and speculated that it might have something to do with their "birdlike legs," and not the Kenyan work ethic. In this case, the genetic explanation has been used to explain away the Kenyan victories, while in Korea genetic explanations serve a different purpose.

It's not for nothing that the Maeil Gyeongje article, with its headline about Korean women's 'different DNA', also noted that subtlety and perseverance are traits unique to Korean women, as this seems to be the point of this focus on genetics and bloodlines - to prove the uniqueness of the Korean race. This uniqueness has sometimes placed Koreans at great risk, such as when people (mistakenly) believed that Koreans were more susceptible to mad cow disease due to their genes (note the similarity to B.R. Myers' description of North Korean mythology wherein their virtue and purity makes them easy targets to a cruel outside world). Of course, it's often seen as a good thing, and this case this uniqueness has given Korean women the ability to excel in sports, even if the list of medals Korean women have racked up might seem scanty considering it stretches back to 1976, and oddly enough this "Korean Women's gene" did not allow their sisters to the north to do any better than fourth place in the U-17 World Cup. Odd how North Korea, with the same genetics, hasn't produced any star golfers or figure skaters.

Moving along from genetics, the Maeil Gyeongje article most importantly also informs us of the true value of these girls' achievement:

"Now 'Korean women' has become another unique brand which informs the whole world about South Korea."

That's nice to know, considering the number of people watching their opening games probably could have fit into a Nolbu Bossam restaurant. As Oranckay put it here, "[B]ringing glory to Korea is the ultimate standard for everything." He also quoted a worthwhile Hankyoreh article about "the sudden respect Korea's break dancers received after they starting winning competitions."

What has made B-boys so famous? Why is it that these low culture dancers are suddenly being praised by TV news anchors, introduced with no small amount of excitement by entertainment world gossip reporters, and are being embraced by the advertising industry? I myself think it's because Korean B-boys won the world championships. And I think it's because people were moved by the sight of white people waving Korean flags and cheering them on. Put differently, had these guys not won medals at an international event they'd have found it hard to shed the image that follows them around, one that sees them as hoodlums and losers.

It's hard to know if the pressure to succeed has gotten stronger or relaxed since the days of the 1988 Olympics. As Baruma relates,

The pressure on the Korean athletes was even worse. Not to win gold was regarded virtually as a national disgrace. Several Korean winners of silver and bronze medals actually apologized for their failures. [...]I thought of the images I had seen in the papers of Korean athletes being drilled in boot camp, wearing full military gear, and screaming "Fight, fight, fight!"

Of course, how victories are reported hasn't changed much, as a Korea Times columnist at the time wrote that, "We must say we are proud that the miracle-maker of the East, Korea, has done it again."

Thinking of such miracle-makers, or how subtlety and perseverance were said to be traits unique to Korean women, I was reminded of how the Korea Times reported Kim Yu-na's Olympic gold medal victory, referring to her as

“The Great Leader, the Sun of Korean people, Undefeatable Steel Commander, Legendary Hero Sun of the Nation, Father Marshal, Prominent leader of the International Communist movement, Genius for Theory and Practice of Management, Cresset of the Union, Successor of the Great Revolution Pursuit, The Greatest Hero of the Humanity.

Whoops. Sorry, that was from a blog entry about how North Koreans refer to Kim Il-sung. Here's what the KT had to say about Yu-na:

Kim Yu-na's Olympic triumph cements her status as the megastar of figure skating and the sport's most transcendent personality since Germany's Katarina Witt.

She became the first female figure skater to achieve the "grand slam," winning the World Grand Prix Final, Four Continents Championships, World Championships and the Winter Olympics. She is the first South Korean to win an Olympic medal in figure skating, and gold at that, while setting a new world record in the process.

And barring an injury or career-altering slump, Kim has to be considered a favorite to defend her Olympic title in Sochi, Russia, four years from now, which would allow her to join Witt as the only two-time Olympic figure skating champions.

[Not getting ahead of themselves at all, are they?]

Kim, who says she idolized Michelle Kwan growing up, now seems to be on course for a more productive career than the American figure skating great, while having a real shot at establishing herself as the best ever.

It remains to be seen whether anyone will emerge to challenge Kim ― her rivalry with Asada is now looking as lopsided as a Pyongyang election.

Of course, Asada is the only female skater in the world who consistently lands the triple axel, but Kim clearly does everything else much better, displaying a deft triple-triple (triple lutz-triple toe loop combination), poise and artistry.

It seems that the world has already seen the best of Miki Ando, another Japanese contender, and Canada's Joannie Rochette, who finished behind Kim and Asada for the bronze in Vancouver, has never managed to beat Kim in an international competition.[Emphases added]

And all a few days after Rochette's mother died - stay classy, KT. But then, it's understandable - nothing must stand in the way of showering praise (and the opportunity to shill for a soda or phone) upon those who bring brand recognition to Korea and glory to those with Korean DNA.

Christians aren't the only missionaries Korea exports, now are they?

Opposition to interracial dating and 1970s bikini photos

As has been noted by Roboseyo, there's quite a lively discussion about interracial relationships going on, starting here, where commenter Jake (a co-founder of Asian Male Revolutions) left comments painting white men and especially the Korean women who date them in a less than positive light, followed by James' rebuttal at the Grand Narrative, and this response by I'm no Picasso, who I agree with Roboseyo is the best blog I've come across this year.

I left a comment at Grand Narrative yesterday, and I'm going to expand on it here. In the comment I pointed to an article that needs some setting up first. Three years ago, several articles appeared in the Korea Times written by Jason Lim. He seemed to have a dislike for English teachers, which came out in this article in late 2007.

I still remember being chewed out by the president of the language institute I worked for 10 years ago because I hired a Korean American UCLA graduate who was far more qualified than one of those 'Let's travel through Asia while earning money as English teachers and score some women at the same time, dude!" types of instructors that were so prevalent in those days.[...] Many lacked professional qualifications, lied about their academic training, and enjoyed less than exemplary lifestyle involving the proverbial sex, drugs, and rock n roll.

This article was criticized by Brian Deutsch at the time. Also worth reading is this article, which did a great job of taking Yonhap to task for this hatchet job (which expressed similar attitudes as Lim's article):

This article is not a search for the truth but a list of disparate episodes that have been connected in such a way as to create a narrative that is unjustified, inaccurate and dishonest. It's alarmist. Worse, it's outright racist because it attributes certain failings ― in this case, nothing less than a failure of character ― to a whole group of people based on the actions of a few individuals because they bear superficial physical resemblance, come from comparable cultural backgrounds, or share a similar language skill set.

It's a well written article, but most surprising is that it was written by Lim himself. He explains his change of heart in this article, where he elaborates on his feelings towards foreign men:

I was a bigot because there was an ingrained prejudice deep in the darkness of my mind that, somehow, Korean women were the exclusive property of Korean men. I was the self-appointed knight in shining armor protecting those who needed no protection against those who weren't even threats, except in the irrational and selfish recesses of my mind. And if you didn't need my protection, fie on thee. I am going to marginalize you as sub-Korean and insult you as a Yankee lover. So the betrayal I felt was toward the Korean women who would debase themselves with foreign men, and the violation I felt was an attack on my bigoted sense of what ought to be.

Do read the rest of his article, and more articles can be found at the Times by doing a search for his name.

One wonders what people of this mindset (and I don't just mean a dislike of interracial relationships, but also the offering of pseudo-academic justifications for such relationships that attempt to rob them of legitimacy and their participants of agency) would react to this film (the sound isn't great, but it's worth watching):



Then again, people who are opposed to such unions probably rarely (never?) have the opportunity to see them from the inside, as that film allowed its viewers to do. This video by T(Tasha) (Yun Mi-rae) talking about her childhood gives a pretty good idea of what it was like to be "marginalize[d] as sub-Korean." [I just noticed this was posted in the comments of James' post as well.]



I've written before about negative portrayals of white male English teachers as sexual predators, and the reactions to them in the Korean media, as well as a comparison of media portrayals of western men and western women, with women invariably being portrayed as sex objects. How long this portrayal of western women has been going on, I'm not certain. Perhaps when Seo Jae-pil returned to Korea in 1896 with an American wife, people started getting ideas (his protege, Syngman Rhee, certainly followed in Seo's footsteps, and thinking of the opinion that "A Korean man dating a white woman is an indication of self-hatred" (from I'm no Picasso), I can only chuckle at the idea of a self-hating Syngman Rhee, first president of the ROK ).

Okay, it likely didn't start there, but what I did find interesting was, while searching through 1970s-era newspapers, I kept coming across pictures of foreign women in bikinis. Here are a few examples, with some translations:

January 21, 1971

"This summer’s fashion, hot pants. Hot pants are going to be exclusively popular with young, captivating, voluptuous girls."

[That one is amusing to read since it reads in hangeul as '핫팬티,' which sounds like 'hot pantie(s)' in English.]

October 19, 1976

'Miami Pixie.'

"Holly Kimel (19), another pixie who appeared at Miami beach. Enrolled at Miami University, she sunbathes and swims in her spare time, playing the part of a model."

January 31, 1976

Liza Hart, whose hobby is boating, sunbathes sitting on a boat after a boat ride at Sorrento Beach in Australia. [AP]

February 5, 1976

“(I) enjoy the freezing sea”
"The voluptuous body of Debbie Pepper, enjoying the sun, sea and waves in below zero winter temperatures at a beach in Florida, USA. [UPI]"

May 8, 1976

That year’s Miss Paris.


Just in case you think they are all white women, that isn't the case:

February 3, 1976

Island beauty Jacqueline Simmons (22) sunbathes on a boat while wearing a cool bikini on the sea near Saint Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. [UPI]

Some of the photos come from places other than AP or UPI, however, and feature somewhat more 'local' girls:

December 03, 1976

"Bewitching female US soldier."
"Proud of her curvy measurements of 38-24-35, Female US sergeant Gale Jones (22) has a captivating figure. She is currently serving in the USAF at Osan AB. [Stars and Stripes]"

March 2, 1976

"This captivating young woman is not an actress or model, but a soldier."


Now, compare this to Korean swimwear ten years later:


In fact, it could have been 20 years - or perhaps almost 30 years later, and you might have seen almost the same amount of skin.

This 1976 advertisement, showing a mother and daughter, show how far along the western beauty ideal had come by that point.


At any rate, I'm not sure when this practice of publishing photos of western women in bikinis started (all of those photos are from the Kyunghyang Sinmun - I didn't look through the Chosun Ilbo's archives, so I'm not sure when they started with their galleries of school girls), but it suffices to say that western women have been portrayed like this in newspapers here for at least three decades, and for most of that time Korean women were most certainly not seen scantily dressed in newspaper photos - and neither were western men. I can only imagine that portrayal of western women filtered into the culture in other ways (Hollywood movies, for instance, though really racy stuff would have been censored back in the day), and I don't think it's that difficult to start connecting the dots between this selective portrayal, the fact that only foreign women were used as models for lingerie (though this is apparently changing), and, "Are you Russian?" Still, there's an irony in the fact that the images published in these Korean newspapers (or the films showing western women as sex objects which might have been shown in Korean theatres) were made in the west (AP, UPI, Hollywood), so the west's own sexism (ie, in the Toronto Sun, the Sunshine Girl is on page 2, while the Sunshine Boy is buried somewhere in the back), has helped shape the Korean view of western women as well.

Hey Hyundai, how are Koreans supposed to cheer with foreigners if you don't invite them?

A weeks ago I wrote about the Shouting Korea campaign, but didn't get around to posting these photos:



The bottom one might make a great new header...

Speaking of the campaign, when you watch the TV ads, they make much clearer who's behind the campaign.



Look carefully, and you might just see the Hyundai logo. The first Shouting Korea ad, a teaser video, can be found here:



One hopes that Motley Crue was compensated by Hyundai, considering how similar the 'drum-drum SHOUT!' part sounds like Shout at the Devil. I have to admit though, I'd rather listen to 80s hair metal than Kim Yuna and Big Bang:



It just gets worse, though. Last time I showed this poster, which describe how to do the 'shouting dance:'


It's even worse when the pictures move and are accompanied by the 'music' above:



Hmmm... manufactured cutesy banal pop music organized by a conglomerate in the name of nationalism. I think if Bill Hicks had lived to see this he would have declared himself to be in hell.

Back to the shouting campaign and the place of foreigners in it:

After watching the Netherlands defeat Brazil Friday night, I noticed something about the Shouting Korea ad on TV, which I found here.

The proud taeguk warriors fighting spirit has been stopped, but...

...we should not stop shouting.

Soccer is a festival.
(Enjoy the world cup at Hyundai Fan Park
with the people of the world)

Let's go to Hyundai Fan Park!

Hmmm, with that mention of taeguk 'warriors' and 'fighting spirit,' perhaps that quote about 75% of Koreans believing that “the survival of the fittest is a major principle of contemporary world” was way off. Hold on a minute though - who did I see the Koreans cheering with?


I know I've seen the girl in the bottom right corner before...


There she is at bottom left. Odd though, I thought the idea was to drown these people out, not cheer with them. What I didn't realize, which a friend pointed out, was that these 'let's cheer with the people of the world (whom we formerly cast as our, y'know, enemies)' ads only appeared after Korea was knocked out of the world cup. Cute. Now that you're no longer a threat, let's cheer together (unless you were cheering for us, and then we already liked you:)

At any rate, now that the taeguk warriors have been sent home (happily with no officiating scandals or bomb threats to embassies) Korean fans can shout along with the people of the world at Hyundai Fan Park. For more information about about Hyundai Fan Parks, let's look at their site:

Hyundai will be offering soccer fans around the world the opportunity to enjoy the World Cup in a fun and safe environment by providing venues and large screens in 32 cities from 19 countries across the 31 days of the event. Giant screens will relay all the action from South Africa, while group cheering boosts the festive mood.

Well, actually, that's from their British site. If you follow the link from there (or dig around FIFA's site), you'll find this page, which lists all of Hyundai's fan parks, including Seoul's, in Olympic Park. Now, clearly, if this is genuine, this call to cheer with the world's people, and not just a slogan to keep people coming out to Hyundai's turf for "distributing plastic balloons, pompoms and other items... as well as their leaflets and advertising goods" (the source of much of the garbage left over after matches), then I imagine Hyundai has done a lot to advertise the location of this fan park to foreigners in Seoul. Right?

[Sound of crickets]

I found no newspaper articles (well, one brief mention of the park's existence) and only one semi-official looking tourism blog in English which mentioned the fan park - and that was so foreigners could cheer at a Korean game.


Golly, it's wonderful that Hyundai creates spaces for foreigners to cheer at games in 18 other countries, but it seems pretty clear that in Korea there is only one team to cheer for, and that Hyundai's shouting campaign was a hell of a lot more honest when the role of foreigners was to be drowned out by the patriotic danil minjok or to join Koreans in celebrating their nation[al team].


Mind you, I may have misunderstood all of this. Perhaps the idea was, after the Korean team's ouster, for Koreans to cheer for foreign teams with the people of the world in a purely symbolic sense, in that those teams' fans would also be at other Hyundai Fan Parks worldwide watching the games at the same time. In that case, I can see why there would be no need to involve foreigners actually living in Korea in any of it.

Nextour offers these reasons for traveling:





One of them seems a little more chaste than the other.