Considering how many native English speakers they had around, and considering the theme was about embarrassing oneself, they might have been a little more careful about, um:
You know, I'm not sure a video designed to raise awareness of a huge event in Seoul should be titled "Korean vs. Foreigner." The banners atop the page direct to the sale's Youtube channel, where the video is second in the rotation. I know it's not intended to be mean-spirited, and I know the "fish out of water" theme is common on television here---and drives one of the most popular television shows---but I'm kind of tired of seeing foreigners who can't take off their shoes, who can't use chopsticks, and who generally make buffoons out of themselves. There are plenty of cultural differences touched upon in the video---well, depending which "foreigner" you are---that they easily could have been playful and educational at the same time. A foreign-made video most likely would have at least drawn attention to drinking at a place called "Ho Bar."
It wasn't too long ago that the Korean Tourism Organization came out with a "Korea Sparkling" widget designed to raise awareness of Korea---to other Korea-based bloggers?---through a less-traditional medium. One problem was the foreign character, David, was made to look like an ass in each vignette. Charles Montgomery criticized the widget on his blog.
Watching this widget reveals far more about what Korean thinks about foreigners (uncouth idiots) than it reveals any reason a foreigner would want to visit Korea.Here are a few of the scenes:
I watched this thing for about 15 minutes and jotted down its little scenarios, which I reproduce below. Seventeen out of the twenty-four scenarios unarguably reveal David (our waegook hero) to be a dangerous idiot. What kind of brilliant marketing scheme is that?
• David lands and is amazed that his host family comes out to pick him up.
• He steps into a room without taking his shoes off.
• He plays hacky-sack and, showing off, knocks a bird unconscious, leaving the hacky-sack on the roof.
• He messes up a pot at a ceramics festival
• He eats sam gyap sal correctly
• He drinkes Sikyhe correctly
• At the Lotus lantern festival he tries to hang lanterns and instead falls on his ass, dragging the lanterns down with him.
• At a tea ceremony he actually kind of gets it right.
• He knocks heads with a Korean woman while (apparently?) trying to kiss her.
• Kimchee makes his head explode in flames.
He took it to the Korea Times a little later:
I watched some 24 vignettes during my viewing, and in 17 of them, Dave, the foreigner, was represented as a dangerous idiot who brings danger and shame wherever he goes. In one case he kicks a Korean in the testicles, in another he falls off of a ladder while hanging lanterns, is hit with a stick and pierced by an arrow and shocks an entire family of Koreans by entering their house with his shoes still on.
These are not messages that would appeal to any potential tourist. Rather, they paint Korea as a dangerous place full of potential social pitfalls. It's possible that these vignettes are meant to be humorous. If so, it's another mistake. How many countries with more successful culture-tourism campaigns use Three Stooges-type humor for self-promotion?
It's not confined to misguided tourism promotions, either, but is found in pretty much every textbook for learning Korean or English I've seen here. Every English textbook in the public schools has something about foreign kids who can't use chopsticks, a picture or two of some dumb white guy in the house with his shoes on, and at least several substitution drills that involve spicy food. So rather than choosing something universal, or using Koreans trying to make themselves understood in English-speaking countries, they revert to foreigners embarrassing themselves in Korea. When I go back home I'll have to check if the beginner-level ESL resources routinely have Korean characters who go to a restaurant and disgust other diners by chewing like horses, or who shock other pedestrians by spitting everywhere. Perhaps there are also Korean characters who get busted for street racing, who gawk at "foreigners," or who can't decide which classmate to cheat off of.
Anyway, I'll reiterate it wasn't made to be mean-spirited or to be insulting, but I wonder why these themes keep surfacing. And, I wonder how they can continue to get foreigners to play these roles. I actually met one of the guys at the KOTESOL conference last weekend, if I had seen the video before then maybe I could have asked him.
There are a couple videos out there that present a different picture of South Korea through foreigners' eyes. Perhaps the best-known is "Kickin' it in Geumchon," made by three guys teaching at the Paju English Village:
And in July a set of three videos was posted to Youtube. Here's part one, which opens in Tokyo, and is introduced with by the following comment:
Let me invite you to travel Korea with me by first stealing you from the city lights to enjoy a strange and different pace underground. The subway was my friend and my enemy.
22 comments:
Having worked on a couple Korean-produced productions, most of the foreigners portrayed, are in fact Russians and they too have a lot of misguided notions of what "Americans" are. The funniest thing I saw was a kyopo teaching a Russian girl to phonetically learn her English lines by instructing her in Korean.
The money offered to Russians to play these buffoonish parts is far more then they normally get paid to work in Korean companies, which may contribute to their willingness. And also the fact that the people they are portraying are not seen as Russians, but as western foreigners, a group that they feel they don't belong to or particularly like.
Ironic, isn't it? These videos once again represent the foreigner as an unrefined and impolite halfwit, but if you ask anyone who works in the service industry in areas where Korean tourists congregate, they will be spoken of in similar, or even in more robust, terms. It's a very nouveau riche attitude they have. For a people that only recently moved indoors, they don't half give themselves airs and graces.
My favorite part of the video was that it showed the foreigners leaving the bar and being done drinking for the night at 9:30m. Most people I know haven't even started by that point or if they have its a precursor to going to the bar afterwards.
It continues to make me wonder where they get these ideas from.
Hey Brian, just so you know that it's not all gloom and doom out there in public school textbook land, I was recently involved in the writing of a high school textbook. In the chapter on culture, I specifically wrote a dialog in which the non-Korean protagonist declines a waiter's suggestion of bulgogi and asks for something spicy! The waiter recommends gimchi-ji-gae instead. I know it's just a small example, but it's a start. Long jouneys and singles steps and all.
Nice work, Walter!
David tz, that's something I noticed, too. It's especially striking when you watch "Surprise" and nearly foreigner is a non-native speaker. Many of the foreigners used in http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2009/03/sexy-mong-rogues-gallery.html notorious "Sexy Mong" episode---the one about English teachers drugging and raping Korean women in nightclubs---were non-native speakers.
I am getting a little tired of Koreans noticing my mad skillz with chop sticks, and getting all impressed, like if I was a child who did his first poop in the toilet.
The fact is that I mastered my chop stick ability nearly a decade before I even set foot in this country...
one thing to note about "Surprise", one of the people I was working with, who was a NES, told me that it's career suicide it work on that show if you wanted to get any work any any other production.
I was watching a show just the other day that had a similar plot line of a foreigner picking up some Korean girl and then his friends hanging out with her without the boyfriend around and eventually raping her. I had to turn it off. Even my wife couldn't believe it and the English was so bad it made Konglish look good. The most unrealistic situation was all three foreigners sitting in a room together conversing in Korean. Because that's what we all do when there's no Koreans around-- speak in a foreign language.
The point has been made many times on the SeoulPodcast that Koreans tend to produce tourist content that pats the back of their higher ups and fails to present content foreigners want to see.
This video is another example. Koreans are so smart because they're so well adapted to their culture and foreigners can't possibly understand even the simplest things. It's a big pat on the collective back.
The message they should be delivering is exotic culture but we're a gracious welcoming bunch not "here's a list of Unix commands you have to remember".
We like McDonald's because it makes it easy. We like Apple ostensibly for the same reason. Telling your tourists they're buffoons from the moment they step off the plane is not the way to attract the masses.
It's amusing and somewhat sad to see Korea trying so hard to market itself abroad and just constantly failing over and over. The 'Visit Korea Year: 2010-2012" being just one of many examples.
Even the title of the video: Korea vs. Foreigner implies some sort of hostility, quite the opposite of the hospitality I would imagine they'd hope to market. I can't imagine any other country trying convey a tourist destination using the word 'versus' in it outside of maybe the West Bank.
This is the same Seoul Grand Sale who announced all these stores were having sales last year without asking the actual stores first.
It looked like the non Korean people in the video were having a good time anyways. Who cares if they were making buffoons of themselves.
I liked the part where the Koreans were playing drinking games as opposed to the non Koreans were just sitting and talking. Didn't quite go into the reason that drinking games are pretty much for kids whereas a polite drink between freinds is something that older people tend do do (Even Koreans, I occasionally see a group of septigenarians sitting outside the local cornorshop gettin their booze on, and they aren't playing 3,6,9.)
Also are we supposed to be impressed by Korean people behaving normally according to their own culture in their own country? I'd be impressed by Koreans who left tips and ate raw Kalbi. And lastly what is the deal with "paying in advance," most bars in other countries run tabs. I think that most people not from Korea just want to pay in advance so that they know the price up front. If you are with Korean people, you want to be squared away so you can escape easily without owing anybody anything before some asshole pours soju in your beer and says Korea style,(Do you know poktanju) and makes you play the 10th round of some boring ass drinking game.
I know Ryan G. I am also awesome with chopsticks and I'm sick of Koreans clapping their hands and going yay!
I'm also sick of Koreans coming up and telling me I need to stir up my bi-bim-bop.
I want to scream, "I have lived in this country for 3 years! I know to stir the goddamn rice!"
Rachel, in Korean class two weeks ago the teacher asked me if I could use chopsticks. She knows I've been here four-and-a-half years. It was prompted because in a picture in the textbook there was a picture of a Malaysian (presumably) woman who can't hold chopsticks. I asked the teacher if she could use a fork. I didn't want to sound like a dick, but come on, knock it off.
I had a girl stir bibimbab for me one time when I aparantly wasn't doing it good enough for her tastes. I really would love to help a Korean person eat his hamburger. And no some people can't use forks.
Rachel, Brian and 3gyupsal,
You just made my day :)
Thanks for the laughs.
It just makes you wonder how the other half lives...
Anyone have any stories about what Koreans act like in other countries?
I met a nice Korean couple on their honeymoon on Koh Phi Phi and introduced myself as an English songsangnim and even took their picture counting "hanna, dul, set."
But then they turned around and got upset with the Thai people for not speaking (or understanding) Korean.
Koreans do have a lot of self depricating humor in some of their variety shows. They actually do make fun of themselves once in a while.
I have a copy of an older Korean drama called Hotelier. It has a scene where the long-lost gyopo daughter shows her nearly homeless father how to use a knife and fork in a fancy hotel restaurant.
"in Korean class two weeks ago the teacher asked me if I could use chopsticks. She knows I've been here four-and-a-half years."
In my last stint as a hogwan teacher several years ago, I mentioned I had lived in Korea (at the time)for the last 10 years. Next thing out of one students' mouth? "Do you know a kimchi?"
I was gobsmacked. How could ANYone live here for 10 years and not know what kimchi was? So I had my fun with her and her classmates. I straight-faced told them I'd never heard of it, what is it? I lasted all of 5 minutes before I broke out into peals of laughter. They couldn't understand why.
I was having dinner one time with a Korean friend who doesn't like her food particularly spicy. She poured a small amount of gochujang into her bibimbap and began to stir. The serving ajumma happened to be walking by our table at the time, told my friend that wasn't enough gochujang, grabbed the bottle without permission, and proceeded to pour a large amount of it into my friend's bibimbap. I was flabbergasted. But it's oddly comforting to know the stereotype runs both ways: ALL Koreans MUST love spicy food!
As far as the videos go, I suspect they're examples of the ambivalence that Koreans feel towards attracting tourism. As usual, the Korean government has decreed what it feels is best for Korean people (developing its tourism industry), even though the Korean public is really not there yet. "Sure, bring on the tourists with their money to spend ... as long as they don't make us feel uncomfortable by acting like, you know, ignorant tourists."
I highly doubt that most Koreans would be happy with tourism reaching the level that you see in, say, Japan. Seeing the odd "westerner" on the street serves as a source of novelty and amusement right now, but if the streets were suddenly flooded with foreign tourists, I think you'd see a very different reaction from many Koreans.
I suspect this ambivalence is one of the reasons why much of the promotional materials produced by the Korean tourism industry seem to be aimed at Koreans, and not at potential foreign tourists. "We're an awesome country that people should want to visit! Here's hoping they don't, though."
this is all a bunch of crap. If they want tourists, then they should show people having fun, not showing how shitty they are. If you see vids from Malaysia or Thailand or India, you see foreigners having fun, not foreigners embarrassing themselves with the local public, showing how stupid they are. If you want tourists, don't show them what's wrong, show them what's right.
Cultural differences are a fact of life, not something you ridicule. If you ridicule them, then expect your customers to ridicule you. As I read on another blog, don't argue with those mongols, you can't win unless you are one, so why try? And that's all I have to say about that.
David tz - I don't think this sort of thing will actually have any bearing on whether or not tourists will come to Korea. Your stereotypical American tourist has been a stock figure of fun in the UK for years and years and it hasn't stopped them coming yearly in droves. It call comes down to the one unfortunate truth that undermines all the countless hours of work and all the endless promotional dollars consumed - if you have a strong product, people will come, irrespective of your stupid slogan or your 'national branding'.
Does Korea have a strong product? Does it bunnies. It has a product that is still largely in the R&D stages. Unfortunately, the marketing department has run off ahead of the rest of the organization and is heavily promoting the product despite not know what it is or what it does - whither the confused, convoluted and curious campaigns. If only all the endless blown budgets could be spent on development of tourist infrastructure...
Post a Comment