Korean Sociological Image #25 – Women: Apologize to your Bottoms!
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After all, even actress Oh Yoon-ah (오윤아) does, or at least according to the black text in the advertisement above.
It also proclaims that her buttocks are worthy of being described as part of a “쭉쭉빵빵” figure, so presumably the logic is that she needs the product being advertised to maintain that figure, with apologies to her buttocks for having used different methods previously.
Yet that’s based on the assumption that, in Korea too, it is a legal requirement for endorsers of products to have already used or be using what they’re advertising. But perhaps that would be applying too much logic here:
Compelling viewing for sure. But then Applehip Korea is essentially arguing that sitting on your ass all day is all you need to get “apple hips” (애플힙) like those of the women above, so possibly the aim of the commercial is more to distract you from that fact?
To be more precise, at least two hours of sitting in the seat a day are necessary according to this Korean “news” article, preferably with three uses of the massage function. See here and here for instructions, and all yours for a mere 338,000 won (US$288)!
Of course, by no means is South Korea the only country in the world where essentially useless exercise equipment is sold, and the seat may well improve one’s posture. But as this Korean source (refreshingly) laments, while Korean women’s interest in their appearance is excessively high, their interest in exercise is very limited. Indeed the entire beauty, diet, and exercise industries here are predicated on a widespread belief that obtaining the perfect body is possible provided one merely buys and passively uses, applies or digests various products.
Lest that sound like exaggeration, see here and here for further examples and links to studies providing empirical evidence. And unfortunately, because of a loophole in legislation regarding “health-related” products specifically, there is little to prevent Korean advertisers continuing to make such absurd claims of their products.
On a final note, did anyone else find having a guy standing with a sign saying “Women! Apologize to your bottoms!” a little creepy? How about several of them, standing on a street with placards and a shopping cart full of apples?
(Found via: Chris in South Korea)
Update: Not really related – the buttock-dancing in the commercials is not as much of a jump for Korea as it may at first appear – but the commercials instantly reminded of these ones from Reebok that have created so much controversy in the US recently. For those of you unfamiliar with them, see the ensuing discussion here, here, and here.
(For all posts in the Korean Sociological Images series, see here)
Selling Wine to Korean Women
Writing about sexual symbolism in advertisements for so long, it takes a lot to shock or surprise me these days.
Still, I confess I burst out laughing at this one.
Lest you feel that my sense of humor is a little crass however, then perhaps you need the context. Last week, I was skimming an article in the Korea Times about the rivalry between the French wine Beaujolais Nouveau (보졸레누보) above and the Korean rice wine Makgeolli (막걸리), and suddenly noticed this:
Recognized as a simply old-fashioned drink for a long time, Makgeolli is popular with trend-savvy young female customers in the current boom. The biggest group is women in their 20s and 30s, and some of them ended up placing orders for [the new] Makgeolli Nouveau (막걸리누보) when they came to reserve its Beaujolais counterpart, according to Hyundai Department Store.
Now I’ve written a lot on gender-based Korean advertising in recent months, including that of tea-drinks, health-drinks, and attempts to make soju more appealing to women, so I was interested in finding out if that preference was partially the result of (or led to) similar marketing: after all, gender-based advertising is often more indicative of advertisers’ stereotypes and prejudices rather than any empirical evidence that it actually works. And in the case of that for “girly” Korean drinks in particular?
Well, recently at least that has meant nothing more sophisticated than either the use of a lot of pastel colors and/or the breaking of the convention that bottles must be pointing straight-up and in the bottom right-corner of advertisements. Instead, they pop up in a most satisfying manner almost anywhere, and usually at somewhat less than a 90-degree angle (see here and the bottom of here).
Obviously I can see the humor, and even like this one (aimed at men), but I’m beginning to find its repetitiveness kind of patronizing too.
Refreshingly, I actually saw little evidence of either feature in the marketing for Makgeolli Nouveau (see here and here for examples) though. But you can imagine what frame of mind I was in then, when I finally turned my attention to advertisements for Beaujolais Nouveau instead, and was greeted with the magnificent specimen above!
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In fairness to Korean advertisers, Beaujolais Nouveau certainly seems to be considered a girly drink worldwide also. In Japan it is poured into spas and promoted as giving smooth skin for instance, and the (presumably) international labeling of previous years’ wines similarly featured pastel colors and flowers and so on.
This possibly explains why the “Peninsula Beaujolais Nouveau Party” at Lotte Hotel in Seoul last Friday boasted a lingerie fashion show too.
But more to the point, the text “신의물방울”, in the top-left corner of the advertisement, translates as “The Water Drops of God” or Kami no Shizuku, a Japanese comic book about wine. Extremely popular, and not just in North-east Asia, there is a wealth of commentary on it, so for interested readers I suggest this post at the manga blog Precocious Curmudgeon for the best summary, with many links to longer news articles. Focusing on the original advertisement here though, in one of those links it is argued that the comic’s greatest impact has in fact been on South Korea, with over 1 million copies sold, and the authors were “stunned to be greeted like stars” on their first visit there in 2007, even finding themselves introduced to candidates during the presidential election.
You can imagine then, the effect on sales here (and worldwide) when Beaujolais Nouveau was featured in it a few years ago, and accordingly in 2007 Japanese distributor Mercian hired the illustrator to design new labels for the drink. Presumably, a Korean language version of that is what we are seeing here.
For those of you more interested the wines themselves though, I recommend this article from Slate more information on Beaujolais Nouveau itself, albeit not a very flattering one (indeed, a rival Japanese food and drink comic book to Kami no Shizuku describes the drink as “little more than a French prank that the Japanese have fallen for hook, line and sinker”), and the recession has recently forced it to be sold there 10% cheaper than in previous years and in plastic bottles.
( Source: unknown )
Meanwhile, for more information on Makgeolli Nouveau I recommend two articles in turn recommended by connoisseur Tom Coyner: the first from early November on the reasons for Makgeolli’s renaissance, and which mentions that women make up only 10% of drinkers of regular Makgeolli but 30% of the fruit-flavored ones; and the second from Wednesday on the difficulties of expanding the market from its current 3.6% of all alcohol sales. In addition, you may also find this article from February about the Japanese role in its resurgence interesting, and finally all of the above should be placed into the context of the Korean government wanting to promote more domestic rice consumption, as evidenced by its attempts to promote “Garaetteok (가래떡) Day,” named after stick-shaped rice cakes, over the more commonly recognized “Pepero Day” earlier this month.
But has anyone actually tried either? Despite writing all that, I actually only started drinking wine and beer myself about 3 months ago(!) at the tender age of 33 (I preferred various cocktails), but if it tastes okay then I certainly wouldn’t mind trying something sweet and cheap like Beaujolais Nouveau. Any variety of Makgeolli however, would be just too weird: I have tried it, and concluded that something that looks like milk should not taste like wine!^^
Update 1: Water Drops of God is being made into a Korean Japanese drama series featuring Bae Yong-jun (배용준), and is scheduled to start next month.
Update 2: As Gomushin Girl has pointed out in the comments, labeling Makgeolli as rice “wine” is probably incorrect. Adding to that, this post at The Marmot’s Hole makes is clear that serving it in a wine glass is particularly inappropriate.
Update 3: Unfortunately, Bae Yong-jun’s drama series has been canceled.
Korean Sociological Image #24: Childcare is Women’s Job
( Source: Raysoda )
For traveling parents, this is a godsend:
Asiana’s mother-friendly services have been gaining enthusiastic reviews from those who have been through the ordeals of traveling with infants.
Through the recent launch of “Happy Mom Services,” the airline has been providing exclusive check-in counters for mothers at the airport, breastfeeding covers and baby slings free of charge for travelers with babies.
It gets even better:
In response to the enthusiastic reception, Asiana will extend the “Happy Mom Services” to 66 airports internationally. Also, they will lengthen the age limit from 24 months to 36 months old…
….Passengers with infants will also receive a “Priority Tag” on their checked baggage. Arriving passengers with infants will now be able to quickly retrieve their baggage without the hassle of caring for their infant while waiting at baggage claim…
…For larger infants traveling on children tickets, Asiana is providing free installation of baby safety seats upon reservation. Asiana hopes the service will negate the need for passengers to bring along their own baby seats.
And considering the discriminatory hiring practices of its main rival Korean Air, which refuses to hire men for its cabin crew (see #2 here), then it seems somewhat picky, almost churlish to find any fault with Asiana’s initiative.
But still, “Happy Mom Services”?
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Yes, easy to overlook, unfortunately we are already barraged with signals that encourage and/or reinforce the notion that childcare is primarily women’s responsibility. For instance, wherever you are in the world, note the warning signs the next time you step on an escalator: only very rarely will you see child stick figures being protected by a male or gender-neutral one rather than a female one. Or, closer to home, consider Seoul Mayor Oh Se Hoon’s recent “Happy Women, Happy Seoul” plan involving the provision of such things as more women’s toilets and the now notorious pink parking spaces: as I point out here, providing larger spaces for those with children and pushchairs to unload is all well and good…but not if fathers are not allowed to use them. And I could go on with many similar examples.
Granted, probably none are confined only to Korea. But in the country with:
- the lowest birthrate in the world
- the lowest female workforce participation rate in the OECD
- uniquely, less female university graduates working than female high school graduates
- such inadequate maternity leave provisions that only 0.46% of mothers take it
- and where – surprise, surprise – one-off cash payments for the birth of children are not encouraging women to completely give up their careers…
…then one suspects that greater attention should be paid to the grass-roots origins of those issues, which unfortunately Asiana’s choice of name only adds to.
Having said that, they’ll still easily be my first choice for traveling with my two young daughters from now on. And if it would be effective, I’d consider writing letters to both English and Korean-language newspapers to draw Asiana’s attention to the problem, hopefully persuading them to change the name to “Happy Parents’ Service.” What do you think?
(See here and here for analysis of the issues raised in this post. And it’s not all doom and gloom: in a rare positive step, recently the Korean government announced that it is about to give more support to single mothers!)
(For all posts in the Korean Sociological Images Series, see here)
Korean Movie Review #2: A Good Lawyer’s Wife (2003)
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Like last week’s choice of movie, A Good Lawyer’s Wife defies easy description.
Heavily marketed on the basis of its explicit sexual content, and with probably no longer than 10 minutes between one sex scene and the next, on the surface it is simply pornography masquerading as art-house cinema. Or so I thought when I first saw it at the cinema in August 2003, my – let’s be honest – appreciation of Moon So-ri’s (문소리) nude body tempered by the knowledge that the object of her affections was Bong Tae-gyu (봉태규), then regularly appearing in numerous childish and annoying television commercials. Hardly lacking for access to pornography, I saw no reason to watch it again in the next 6 years.
But the movie was my first introduction to Hwang Jung-min (황정민), whom after seeing his transformation into a bumbling, possibly slightly mentally-handicapped idiot in You Are My Sunshine (너는 내 운명; 2005) a little later, instantly became one of my favorite actors. And then seeing So-ri’s brief but stellar performance in Peppermint Candy (박하사탕; 2000) last week too, I thought I’d give it another chance. After all, my tastes are a little more mature and more discerning now, and far from being put off by depictions of relationships between 30-something women and (often) childish younger men, if all goes to plan I’ll be formally writing a dissertation on precisely that by next March.
Watching it (again) myself over several nights originally then, I was very surprised at how much I liked it this time, and how much of the plot I’d either overlooked or simply gotten completely wrong 6 years ago. Struggling to determine why my opinion had changed so dramatically on a second viewing, I decided to watch it with my wife to see if she liked it also, and more importantly why. Unfortunately, she too thought it was largely pornography masquerading as art-house cinema(!), but she did at least confirm what I’d relearned about the plot. And watching her reactions out of the corner of my eye while ironing shirts (as one does when seeing a highly pornographic movie for the third time), finally it came to me.
The first thing of note is that its English title is an extremely poor choice. Although it’s true that So-ri’s sexual frustrations with lawyer-husband Jung-min are the catalyst for her having an affair with her teenage neighbor (not actually consummated until close to the end, but – rather than maintaining the suspense – the DVD introduction helpfully shows that scene!), she is by no means a “society wife” smiling inanely at his shoulder at numerous dinner parties and so forth; in fact, she literally has no involvement in his working life and relationships whatsoever. There’s no evidence to suggest that she “gave up her dancing career in order to be a good lawyer’s wife” either, despite what the appalling Wikipedia article on the movie suggests, and one suspects that – like many English-speaking viewers – the writer was misled by the title.
Instead, a much better translation of “바람난 가족” would have been “A Family Having Affairs,” and accordingly it is quickly revealed in the first few minutes that with the exception of Jung-min’s dying father (competently played by Kim In-moon {김인문}) all main adult characters are or will have illicit sexual relationships: Jung-min a long-standing one with Baek Jeong-rim (백정림), a very complex character difficult to get to grips with in just one sitting; his mother Yoon Yeo-jeong (윤여정) with a minor character; and of course So-ri with Tae-gyu. And therein lies the source(s) of the continual sex scenes, which apparently attracted Korean viewers in droves (it was #1 at the box office).
But what, amongst all the sex, were the other points of this movie? What, indeed, was its “moral,” which – as I stressed in my last review – I believe a movie has to have in order to be worthwhile?
Well, without wanting to give any of the plot away, by virtue of all the affairs this is clearly a family with problems (even an adopted son is aware that Jung-min is lying when he says he’s working late). Jung-min’s reasons for his are unfortunately never elaborated, but his mother’s are: like Moon So-ri, she was sexually frustrated.
And how, in a marriage, might one become so?
Well, while I’m not naive or intellectually shallow enough to attribute all married couples’ sexual problems to a lack of communication, nor arguing that communicating with one’s spouse (or partner for that matter) automatically solves them, I would wager that – if you’ll forgive the pun – a lack of communication is at the root of the vast majority of them. But whereas So-ri may not have been able to resolve her own sexual frustration with Jung-min given that he was already secretly having an affair, tellingly she doesn’t even try. Instead, as one would expect from a fucked-up family, she seems to have her heart set on fucking Tae-gyu literally the morning after Jung-min fails to satisfy her (the poster on the right is rather misleading).
Granted, to a large extent I’d simply be projecting in seeing meaning in that. After all, after 9 years together as a couple (5 married), my wife and I have naturally had our own sexual issues, especially after the birth of 2 children, but – with the knowledge that not doing so would have grave consequences for our marriage – all happily resolved by simply discussing things. Hence, despite all the attention on them, I do personally see all the affairs and the sex in the movie as natural consequences of and/or metaphors for something deeper. As I think was the deliberate intention of director Im Sang-soo (임상수).
For instance, as Darcy Paquet in his excellent review at Koreanfilm.org points out, this is not the first time he has presented frank sexuality and nonconformist heroes in his movies. And in particular, bear in mind that with: the longest working hours in the world (albeit many of which are not actually spent working); the lowest women’s workforce participation rate in the OECD; and prostitution accounting for 4.1% of GDP also, then as this Japanese author (and personal experience) suggests, there are a lot of virtually sexless marriages in this part of the world.
Ergo, there may be more to the popularity of this movie than mere voyeurism, particularly as it was the enthusiastic response to finally having such frustrations articulated in popular culture in the mid-1990s that is what made movies like this possible in the first place.
True, I’ve yet to look for confirmation from Korean-language sources of that (watch this space). But as a response to potential accusations of overanalysis and projection then, let me offer this challenge: at the behest of their relatives and descendants, Jung-min’s main legal case in the movie – presented in the very first scene in fact – involves the unearthing of victims of an atrocity, which presumably took place during the Korean War or just before. There are also references to Jung-min’s own extended family being separated by the Korean War. While I have yet to come across any reviewer that interprets the former as any more than merely establishing his character as a lawyer though, and hence easily interchangeable with any other legal case, what purpose could both serve other than as metaphors for the broken family at the heart of this movie?
Likewise, gratuitous sex is not what this movie is all about. And so compelling are all main characters’ stories, that despite yourself you may be wishing that one or two sex scenes had been removed in favor of further character development by the end of the movie. Indeed, the only criticism of the movie I have personally is that even after 3 viewings, Jung-min’s motivations for his affairs remain a frustrating enigma.
Next week, if I can find it: My Wife is a Gangster (조폭 마느라; 2001) Samaritan Girl (사마리아; 2004).
Korean Sociological Image #23: Male Objectification
Acutely aware of the role my heterosexual male gaze can play in my choice of subjects and images for this blog sometimes, ironically I spend more time looking for those involving men these days, hoping to find something of note with which to achieve a balance.
In itself, this new commercial with boy-band 2PM hardly qualifies. But not only is male objectification an increasingly common theme in Korean advertising in recent months (see here and here for two examples featuring Lee Byung-hun {이병헌} and JYP {박진영} respectively), this would easily be one of the most audacious examples I’m aware of.
And coming so soon after this one for Cob Chicken (Cob 구어조은닭) too, then perhaps, like kissing, male objectification will be yet another advertising taboo discarded in 2009?
Granted, this may sound like exaggeration to readers based outside of Korea: all of the above examples are rather tame compared to their Western counterparts (NSFW) for instance, and the frequency of male objectification in the Korean media is easily paled by that of women, whom are also subject to excessive objectification and commodification in daily life here.
But that media imbalance is hardly confined to Korea, and the speed of change is particularly remarkable. After all, however unbelievable it may sound today, recall that social norms prohibited Korean women from publicly admiring men’s bodies until as recently as 2002!
Meanwhile, apologies for not providing a translation for the commercial, but given the product’s name then I think you’ll quickly get the idea!^^ And I would very much appreciate it if readers could tell me of any more examples like it that I may have missed.
(For all posts in the Korean Sociological Images series, see here)
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