That's some fine sleuthin' and a good memory by A Fillet of Seoul, who is enjoying the parliament brawl as much as its participants. He reminds us that a few years ago Koreans got bent out of shape over a clothing commercial using stock footage of brawling Korean politicians. A complaint lodged by the Korean Embassy in New Zealand to the Advertising Standards Complaints Board of New Zealand in 2001 reads:
An advertisement for Hallensteins was screened on TV One, TV2 and TV 3. It depicted an incident, in what appeared to be an auditorium and which involved a large number of smartly dressed Asian men, wearing suits. Some of the men wore jackets and some wore shirtsleeves. For no obvious reason, groups of men started to behave aggressively toward each other, pulling at each other's clothes and throwing punches. The graphics state, "Business Shirts 2 for $50 – Hallensteins".
The gist of the ad being you never know when you'll need a back-up shirt. The complaint continues.
The Embassy believes that the advertisement breached Rule No. 5 in the Advertising Code of Ethics and Basic Principle No. 3 of the Revised Code for People in Advertising. It depicted Korean politics and people in a negative fashion and was therefore offensive to the Korean community in New Zealand. It also believes that scenes of a country’s political conflict should not be used for commercial purposes.
The complaint was not upheld, and the blog comes to this astute conclusion:
If you stopped acting like asshats, people wouldn’t laugh at you for acting like asshats.
Go read the rest of the entry for more.
Still no sign of the advertisement online, though searches did bring up a few mentions on Korean websites and the above scan from a page about creative advertising.
3 comments:
"If you stopped acting like asshats, people wouldn’t laugh at you for acting like asshats."
It's so true. I get so tired of Koreans behaving badly and then whining when someone else points it out.
Kelsey: I'll second that. Beautiful summary of the entire situation.
They remind me of 3rd graders, much of the time. They want to have their cake, and eat it too. They want to blame all their problems on other people, like a whiny child saying "but he said a mean word!" in defense of hitting someone.
It goes beyond saving face, in my mind, and I sometimes feel like they use that as an excuse for their bad behavior. I'm sorry, but a lie is a lie, and that crosses cultures.
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