Creative Korean Advertising #19: Underappreciated Konglish
( Source )
For all my critical analysis of Korean commercials over the years, first impressions still really last on me.
Take the following commercial for Lotte DC Plus Card (롯데 DC플러스 카드) for instance, which I frequently noticed on Yahoo Korea! last week while I was preparing this post on a rather strategically-placed soju bottle in another commercial featured there. For a long time, I thought actor Kim Ah-joong (김아중) and the male voiceover were merely saying “DC” repeatedly, albeit pronouncing it “dee-she” because that’s how it would sound if written in the Korean alphabet (which lacks a “C” or “see” sound):
But provided it’s done by attractive members of the opposite sex, then, well, I often find English mispronounced by non-native speakers to be rather cute, and I’d wager you do too. And indeed, the focus on the voices in this commercial was the deliberate intent of the advertiser, as not only is there the following amusing version in which Kim Ah-joong’s voice is placed into the mouths of others…
…but the entire thing has even been made into an extended song, downloadable from the Lotte DC Plus Card website (see here for the lyrics):
And I was considering post the commercial(s) here simply on those merits alone. But I’ve occasionally misinterpreted commercials in the past because of not double-checking them later, so I made sure to do so with these ones. And I’m very glad I did, as – as some of you will already have noticed – reading the commercials as mere mispronunciation of an English acronym is completely mistaken.
( Source: Paranzui )
Take the second commercial again: if you listen very closely, while the male voiceover is saying “DC” repeatedly, it turns out that Kim Ah-joong is actually only saying that about half the time. For instance, when the scene above comes up at 0:07, she says “bing-she-doh dee-she” (빙씨도 디씨), and, lo and behold, “bing” (빙) is the family name of the people depicted (written on the pots), “she” (씨), written in the Chinese character “氏” is much like the titles “Mr” and “Mrs” etc., albeit with the important proviso that you would never use them to refer to a superior (people’s positions, like “Teacher Kim”, “Superintendent Park” and so on are used instead), “doh” (도) means “also”, and “dee-she” means, well, “DC.” So, Kim Ah-joong is not mindlessly repeating “DC” in a Korean accent, albeit rather cutely, but instead saying “The Bings also [like/use] the DC card,” and before them, the middle-aged woman “Choon (춘) also [likes/uses] the DC card,” and so on.
This would have been more obvious to me had I seen the earlier commercials in the series:
Ultimately then, this is actually quite a clever and amusing use of the different meanings and pronunciations of the “C” sound in both languages. And, forgive me if I’m projecting here, but I think it just goes to show how there is often a great deal more to Korean advertising than what may at first appear. Moreover, just like a little knowledge of Korean suffices to completely transform one’s opinion of these commercials, not much more is required to see Korean society in a new light also: recall how full of sexual innuendo this and this example were for instance, but in a society still usually labeled as “sexually conservative” by the English-language media.
(For all posts in the Creative Korean Advertising series, see here)
Korean Sociological Image #21: Calf Reduction Surgery
It’s one thing to be aware of the popularity of calf-reduction surgery in Korea on an abstract level, but quite another to see the results in the flesh for the first time.
Or rather, the reduction thereof. And while I’m aghast at the notion of voluntarily having one’s nerves cut and muscle removed for any cosmetic surgery procedure, in this particular case the mind simply boggles at how anybody can consider the “after” picture as an improvement.
Unfortunately though, it is neither a mistake nor a satire, but is instead from a genuine advertisement in this month’s Busan edition of Cocofun (코코펀), a free local entertainment guide available in major cities. Here is the full version:
For the record, I’m not labeling skinny calves as unattractive by definition, particularly if a woman – and it’s overwhelmingly women who undergo calf-reduction surgery – has such legs naturally; as it happens, the difficulty of finding food I wasn’t allergic to when I was young meant that my own calves probably weren’t much bigger until my mid-teens, even though I’m a man. Buffing-up in my early-20s to compensate for my own body image then, naturally I also prefer healthy and active women over sedentary thin ones today, but regardless I struggle to see how the muscle development naturally ensuing from such a lifestyle could ever be considered unattractive.
This isn’t the case in Korea and the rest of Northeast Asia however. For a good introduction as to why, I recommend this post at FeetManSeoul for starters, while some other sources, such as the following English guide to the procedure from this cosmetic surgery clinic in Seoul for instance, also mention the fact that “Asian women have shorter legs and thicker calves than Caucasian women.” But lest one is tempted to read too much into that curious comparison though, by no means do all commentators on the subject indirectly refer to some alleged Caucasian ideal, and actually even this more direct description of the procedure from the same site fails to mention it.
( Source )
However, there may also a generational difference to take into account. Take 38 year-old singer and actor Uhm Jung-hwa (엄정화) below for instance, appearing in a press conference with 29 year-old actor Han Chae-young (한채영) for their movie Are you living with the person you love? (지금 사랑하는 사람과 살고 있습니까?) in July 2007. Ironically, both are well-known for having received extensive cosmetic surgery, but as you can see, only Uhm Jung-hwa has retained her muscular legs. I find her much the more attractive for that reason, and seriously wonder how much physical exertion Han Chae-young is capable of; did I mention that calf-reduction patients have to learn how to walk again?
But while its voluntary nature may may mean that it’s too extreme of me to compare calf-reduction surgery akin to foot-binding at this point (although both do involve the physical disablement of women for the sake of a wholly artificial beauty ideal), I will go so far as to invoke Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792) here. For not only did she note that women being considered “too susceptible to sensibility and too fragile to be able to think clearly” was partially the consequence of not receiving the physical education that boys did (see here also), tellingly she also wrote that women are “taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison”, implying that if young women weren’t so encouraged to focus their attention on beauty and outward accomplishments, they could achieve much more.
Points to ponder in a country where health-food is promoted to elementary school girls on the basis of allegedly improving their face-shape and making their undeveloped breasts and buttocks bigger. And yet still people wonder why I’m so negative sometimes…!
(For all posts in the Korean Sociological Images series, see here)
Korean Sociological Image #20: Sex Sells
Pity the hapless commentator on hidden themes in advertising. Not only is he or she often accused of overanalysis, but men in particular can be labeled as positively perverted in seeing sexual symbols in otherwise inanimate objects.
Granted, sometimes a bottle is just a bottle, and Cheoum Cheoreom Cool (처음처럼 쿨), a new brand of soju, is not the only commercial to have an animated example of its product moving across the screen below it on Yahoo! Korea at the moment. But I do wonder why the bottle is tilted the way it is though, particularly as the long-held convention in Korean alcohol advertising is that bottles should always be displayed standing upright?
As it happens, that convention is still adhered to on Cheoum Cheoreom Cool’s website, but with the soju bottle springing-up in a most satisfying manner in the corner of the screen once you click on the “over 19″ button. That wasn’t the case when I wrote about its marketing campaign last month.
Naturally, I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
But I’m not against this latest twist per se, and indeed this advertisement for bokbunja (복분자) below with a similar theme still puts a smile on my face 4 months after first noticing it (see here for more like it). And yet Cheoum Cheoreom Cool’s version isn’t quite so, well, elegant, and smacks of desperation given that the campaign already so excessively focuses on female body parts. Perhaps like Lee Hyori before her, UEE (유이) isn’t bringing Lotte the increased market share anticipated?
( Source: Jinro )
Thanks to reader “JSK Hanglo” for bringing the commercial to my attention.
Update: See here for some similar phallic symbolism from the latest New Yorker.
(For all posts in my Korean Sociological Images series, see here)
14 comments