The Korean Media’s War on Women (and Men)
Via 10 Confessions, here is a short but quite rare “expo on the focus of the mass media and internet news sites on superficial looks of the entertainers in the industry, and how this trend needs to change.” Sorry that it’s all in Korean, but 10 Confessions provides a good (English) description of it, and it’s the least I can do to pass on the videos themselves (especially after spending half an hour looking for them!).
To see the segment, jump ahead to 2:30 in the first video. It lasts until 4:10 in the second.
The Korean Ad Industry’s Celebrity Obsession
(Sources: left, right)
See Busan Haps for the full article. It was prompted by Yoo In-na (유인나) and then Kim Sa-rang (김사랑; left) endorsing Gillette razors last year, when suddenly a lot of celebrities seemed to be endorsing products not normally associated with their sex.
Granted, women have been used to sell things to men for as long as advertisements have existed. And as for using Hyun Bin (현빈; right) to advertise a tea-drink that supposedly gives you a “V-line”, that’s just common sense: not only will he appeal to women, but so too might some men be encouraged to think about their own, hitherto exclusively feminine V-lines, thereby creating a whole new market.
But still: I’d wager that there has indeed been a great deal of gender-bending in the Korean advertising industry in the last couple of years. And I’ve definitely never heard of a guy advertising bras before, no matter how dishy I’m assured this one (So Ji-sub; 소지섭) happens to be:
(Source)
Was he chosen just because he’s a pretty face? Or was the reasoning much more subtle than that? I can’t say in this case. But I do know that celebrities have a much greater effect on our consumption choices than we all like to think. Please read the article for more on how and why…
For some hints, here is the interview with Fame Junkies author Jake Halpern that I refer to in it. If for some reason that the video below doesn’t immediately take you to it though (it’s at 34:30), then please click here instead:
Finally, if you’ve read this far, then I heartily recommend watching Starsuckers in its entirety. For me, it was especially what the narrator says at 45:45 that sold me on it, and which I encourage you all to refer to the next time someone accuses you of reading too much into anything you see in the media:
p.s. Sorry for sounding so mercenary, but please let me remind everyone that any donations for my writing, however small, are very much appreciated. Unfortunately though, I haven’t actually received any since January 21(!), and I don’t get paid for my Busan Haps articles!^^
Korean Sociological Image #68: Laughing at the 1970s Fashion-Police
(Sources: left, right)
Remember when the Korean Defense Ministry said it was considering playing girl-groups’ music videos on giant TV screens along the DMZ? The rationale, according to the official that thought of it, was that “the revealing outfits worn by the performers and their provocative dances could have a considerable impact on North Korean soldiers”.
Alas, nothing came of the idea. But the irony was palpable: in the 1970s, such revealing outfits were deemed subversive by the military government, with ruler-bearing policemen stopping women on the street to measure the length of their skirts (they would also cut men’s hair if it was too long).
This difference is humorously illustrated in Samsung’s 2007 commercial for the Anycall Miniskirt (애니콜 미니스커트), with Jun Ji-hyun (전지현):
It’s curious that it was set somewhere which never actually had such “fashion-police”, when there’s a wealth of related video and imagery from Korea that could have been used instead (just look under “미니스커트 다속” for instance, literally “miniskirt control/supervision/clampdown”, but probably that should just be chalked up to creative license. As Koreans have indeed regularly poked fun at their old, ridiculous laws on miniskirt length, not least because they weren’t removed from the books until as recently as 2006!
More ominously though, the commercial can easily read as an advertiser doing some subtle fashion-policing of its own, through informing the Korean public of the new de facto rules. And it ends with yet another example of a phone literally embodying a woman too.
Both are also evident in LG’s recent advertisement for LTE, a type of 4G wireless service:
(Source)
On the left, the copy reads “If it’s only the shape/appearance of LTE, then it isn’t available everywhere”, while on the right it reads “If it’s really LTE, then it’s available in every city”. The headline in the middle reads “But it’s different”, and finally the copy at the bottom reads “The one and only LTE, in touch in every city nationwide. Automatic roaming in 220 countries worldwide”.
Personally, I think the execution is flawed — if the woman on the left is supposed to only have the shape and/or appearance of the real LTE (confusedly, “모양” means both), then shouldn’t both women actually look and be clothed exactly the same, with some indication that they’re different for some other reason (say, by having the women on the left scowling)?
Either way, the advertisement’s other message is that the woman on the right, with high-heels, a V-line face, impossibly-long (and uneven!) photoshopped legs, and a dress that only just covers her underwear, is quite literally the modern standard that all agasshis (young women) should adhere to. Jun Ji-hyun’s bobbies would be proud.
(For more posts in the “Korean Sociological Image” series, see here)
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