Creative Korean Advertising #12: Calvin Klein Underwear
( Via: scaryideas )
While probably a first only for Korea, such audacity is a good reflection of the veritable revolution that’s occurred in the Korean lingerie industry in recent years, with a plethora of both foreign and new Korean companies now challenging the previous triad of Try Brands, BYC and Taechang as women get increasingly bored with their standard white, black and beige selections and only a small variety of designs. And more daring too: whereas modesty dictated that one had to disguise the fact that one was wearing lingerie in the early-2000s (see this commercial from 2003 for a good illustration of that), fashions are very different now. From a 2007 article in the JoongAng Daily:
Kim, a fashion-hungry Seoul girl, went on to disclose more underwear secrets as she walked out of the department store. “Do you remember when Winona Ryder wore a bright red bra under a white tank top during an award show and the straps showed?” she said, with a smile. “To tell the truth, I’ve been copying that look all summer.”
Looking around the Apgujeong area recently, it seemed that Kim wasn’t the only one. Han Hye-seong, 25, was wearing a flowy peasant skirt with a loose top, under which her colorful bra straps were strategically placed to be noticed. “Five years ago, these [straps] would have been clear. But now, I hardly ever see clear straps being sold,” she said.
And it’s probably no coincidence that Korean women generally no longer wear t-shirts over their bikinis and swimsuits at the beach too.
Given that background then, I’m not sure that I agree with this Korea Times report from last week that claims that it’s because of the recession that couples are electing to spice up evenings at home with sexy underwear rather than go out for a meal or something: correlation doesn’t mean causation, and maybe by this stage Korean women would have started buying “T-panties” and so on regardless?
(Any new readers wondering why Korean lingerie models are usually Caucasian, like in this example, see here)
Update: Naturally, blogger Samhita at Feministing doesn’t like it, calling it “Sexist, Voyeuristic, and Pervy,” although for a change many of the commentators to that post disagree with her.
Update 2, April 29th:
I’ve just found this advertisement in passing (source), and while it’s probably not Korean (there’s no information about where the picture was taken), it uses a similar logic:
But for some reason that I can’t fathom, I find this advertisement slightly distasteful, but not the first. Perhaps because there’s a voyeuristic, “upskirt” element to it? In which case, I can slightly better understand (if not concur with) objections to the first one now, and it says a lot about the region of the world that I’m in that that one didn’t bring to mind notions of wet t-shirt competitions, whereas the second reminds me of things like this and this instantly!
Update 3, July 18: Neither the article nor the comments to it are really worth my translating, but for what it’s worth an article about the ad made the front page of Yahoo! Korea today.
(For all posts in the “Creative Korean Advertising” series, see here)
I for one am waiting for the summer when t-backs are on Korean beaches. Other than the occasional Russian girl sporting one, the Korean women have yet to make that necessary step in the evolution of swim wear.
And, of course, my interests in seeing them do so are purely stemming from sociological interest.
Yes, I too can think of much less pleasurable things to study.
But seriously, it’s really quite amazing how much things have changed since I first came here.
I would agree…I first worked here a short spell in 2002, back in the long shoes and boys in hair band days. The attire was a lot of plaid, that school-marm look that still exists here and there, and Khaki pants with a long sleeve button down untucked.
Now the skirts, the short shorts and the “skinny” jeans reign supreme. You would know better than I, but how much of this would you credit to entertainment (movies, TV, etc) culture influencing the general culture or is it the other way around? The lurches of such a quick transformation is an interesting thing to chart.
Indeed it would be, but naturally a host of factors would be responsible, and whether they came more from culture or the media often very much a moot point. Having said that, I think that there certainly have been some crucial events and or factors responsible for the change: if I just confine myself to what I’ve written about or what comes off the top of my head for now, then for starters I’ve argued many times the World Cup of 2002 was very important (see here, here, here, and here); another would be the role of domestic and international women’s magazines, many Korean women seeing the latter as higher quality and preferable (at least if the prices of the magazines and for advertising are anything to go by), and regardless a means of transmission of usually far racier Western standards for dress and so on; and finally Sex and the City, which I admit doesn’t sound like a very profound or original thing to say, but fellow blogger Gord Sellar has convincingly argued that at the very least it’s had a big impact on Korean women’s worldviews and generating consumer industries specifically for single young women, which would have had at least an indirect effect on challenging previous (and boring and/or uncomfortable) public standards for what they were “supposed to” wear.
So, any ideas where the ad is located? The thong is one fashion trend that I hope does not become popular here, sometimes I think I am the only person that thinks they look terrible…
If the ad is still there, then somewhere around Chosun University in Gwangju; it was done by advertising students back in January.
Couldn’t agree more about thongs: I’m all for variety and sexual liberation and expressing oneself and all, but I wouldn’t exactly call them classy.
Just wanted to go on the record saying, (“Thats the best advertisment EVER”!!).
And as far as thongs go, i think women can wear whatever they want and no one will hear ANY complaints from me.
“A Marines perspective”