11.1~Article

Korea Herald

U.S. dramas distort S. Korea image
By Song Sang-ho | Published October 24, 2010

Many images of South Korea in hit American television series have been “distorted,” raising concerns over their detrimental impact on the country’s overall image, a ruling party lawmaker pointed out Thursday.

Rep. Hong Jung-wook of the Grand National Party said that shows such as “Lost,” “24” and “Crime Scene Investigation,” each of which has been watched by hundreds of millions of people, including Koreans, have shown images that are far from reality.

He made the mention during a parliamentary audit of the Foreign Ministry at the National Assembly, offering a series of examples in which the country was wrongly depicted.

One example is “Lost,” which has gained much popularity here thanks to Korean-born actress Kim Yun-jin. In it, the Han River, regarded as one of the iconic landmarks in the capital of Seoul, was described as a small stream in a village, the lawmaker said. The 1-kilometer-long bridge over the river was shown as an old small bridge, he added.

[ The image of the Han River Grand Bridge in the U.S. television series “Lost” (right photo) and its actual appearance ] 

In another scene, a fishing village in Namhae, South Gyeongsang Province, was described as if it were located in Southeast Asia. In the scene, there is a villager wearing a traditional Vietnamese hat and a small sailboat, which can hardly be seen in Korea given its shape and size, was also shown, Hong said.

Also in the television series, a person seen drinking soju, a traditional Korean alcoholic beverage, uses a glass different from the typical Korean glass for the drink. Korean houses and Buddhist temples were also different from those commonly seen here.

“In short, it was a mix-up of elements from China, Japan and Southeast Asia,” said Hong in a press release.

In the TV series “24,” a scene where a person suffers harsh torture in Seoul is shown, which could tarnish the overall image of the capital city even though it was a fictional one, Hong said.

In “CSI,” there was a scene of a Korean community in the United States where a North Korean song regarding an allegiance to the communist state’s ruling Workers’ Party was played as background music.

“Given the enormous impact of popular culture, the images that people have about South Korea will be more similar to those represented in the popular culture rather than images related to the hosting of the Group of 20 summit or the exporting of the nuclear reactors,” Hong said.

“The Foreign Ministry has underscored superficial ‘soft power diplomacy’ and ‘culture diplomacy.’ However, it needs to make substantial efforts to leave a good national image in the minds of the world’s people.”

An Bo-seob, professor of public relations and advertising at Sookmyung Women’s University, said the country could utilize Hallyu, the pan-Asian popularity of Korean culture, to promote the positive image of the country.

“People abroad vicariously experience Korea through the dramas. Thus, the dramas play a crucial role in making images of a country for the general public,” he said.

“It would be efficient for us to highlight the advancement and development our nation has achieved through Hallyu as it would be difficult for us to review their synopses (before the dramas are aired).”


QUESTIONS~

1. Can you think of some recent TV shows that have discussed Korea (in any aspect, whether news pieces or Korean people, lifestyle or culture)?

a. Was the tone positive or negative?

b. Was the coverage thorough? Accurate? Incomplete? Misleading?

c. Was the way in which it portrayed Korea stereotypical or representative of how things really are?

2. If you’ve ever witnessed a poor or unfavorable portrayal of Korea, why do you think it was so? Is there a “right way” or “wrong way” to confront or address it? Please explain.

3. This was recently said about Korea:

“With the G-20 Summit approaching, all eyes are focusing on Seoul. The Korean economy has been growing rapidly over the past couple of years and it now ranks 9th in the world in terms of export volume. However, Korea’s national brand image still lags behind. According to criteria on national branding developed by the Samsung Economic Research Institute and the Presidential Council on Nation Branding, Korea’s national brand ranked 19th in terms of substance and 20th in terms of image.” 

excerpted from Korea’s national brand needs to be improved by Yoon Chang-hee (Korea JoongAng Daily, Nov. 1, 2010) 

a. In light of this, how do you think the Foreign Ministry, Korean Tourism Organization and other similar groups are doing to make Korea’s “national brand” more appealing?

b. Could they do anything else to improve it?

c. Should the burden of the “good ambassador” rest entirely on the marketing, advertising and public relations groups working for the Korean government? Who else?

10.18 ~ Article

Seoul Journal
Rising Cost of Kimchi Alarms Koreans
By MARK McDONALD | Published: October 14, 2010

Koreans buy napa cabbages subsidized by the government after waiting in line for about an hour at the Tongin market in Seoul.

SEOUL, South Korea — Even in the middle of a loud and bustling outdoor market, her voice drops to a whisper when she agrees to reveal the two secret ingredients that make her kimchi so popular with her customers.

“Fermented-anchovy paste and pickled-prune sauce,” says Kim Gil-soo, looking warily, both ways, down the alley in front of her store, called Prosperity.

“I special-order the sauce from a certain place in the countryside,” she said, still whispering. “I’m quite well known for my kimchi.”

But recent sales have been disappointing, Mrs. Kim said, because of an unavoidable spike in the price of her kimchi, the fiery and pungent Korean national dish that typically combines cabbage, radishes, red chili peppers, garlic and salt. The price for one head of long-leafed Napa cabbage grown in Korea has skyrocketed in the past month, to as much as $14, from about $2.50. Domestic radishes have tripled in price, to more than $5 apiece, and the price of garlic has more than doubled.

Kimchi has become so expensive that some restaurants in the capital no longer offer it free as a banchan, or side dish, a situation akin to having an American burger joint charge for ketchup, although decidedly more calamitous here. The politics editor of a major South Korean newspaper called the kimchi situation “a national tragedy,” and an editorial in Dong-a Ilbo termed it “a once in a century crisis.”

Wholesalers and economists have blamed overly rainy weather for the cabbage shortage, as well as fewer acres having been planted after a bumper crop and low prices in 2009. The average price for a head of Napa cabbage last year was $1.40, according to food industry figures.

The opposition Democratic Party also has laid blame for the shortages on a large river-reclamation project, saying it destroyed farmland that would have been used for cabbages and other vegetables, a charge the government has denied.

Meanwhile, there have been reports of cabbage rustling in rural areas, and the government has suspended tariffs on imported cabbage and radishes from China, beginning Thursday. The president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, has said that until the crisis eases he will eat only the cheap and inferior kind of cabbage — the round-headed variety commonly found in Europe and the United States.

“There is no reason for regular folks to have to buy items integral to daily life at higher prices than international prices,” Mr. Lee said at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, while instructing his economists to more closely monitor commodity prices that have sent the South Korean consumer price index to a 17-month high.

The price increases have caused many middle- and lower-income homemakers to cancel the making of kimchi at home this year, a traditional rite of autumn that typically brings together mothers, daughters, aunts, grannies and neighbors. Some families can go through a couple of hundred heads of cabbage, and it’s not unusual for all the bathtubs and sinks in a house to be filled with bobbing cabbages as they are washed, soaked and brined.

“I’m probably not going to do it at home this year,” said Roh Eun-ja, a Seoul restaurant owner. “Even if the price of cabbage comes down and I do make kimchi, I’ll be downsizing. Not so much this year.”

Mrs. Roh has two daughters, both in their 30s, and she said they learned to make kimchi “by looking over my shoulder, by tasting and doing, like all Korean girls are supposed to.”

One daughter works at an Outback steakhouse, the other at an upscale department store, and they have little time to make kimchi on their own, Mrs. Roh said, lamenting the loss of another tradition to the “ppali ppali” or “hurry hurry” lifestyle of modern South Korea.

“It’s also more expensive to make it on your own,” Mrs. Roh said, “so more and more people buy it ready-made now. That’s what my daughters do.”

Supermarkets have reportedly had difficulty keeping packaged kimchi in stock. A pouch of the popular Chongga Jip brand, made solely from Korean ingredients, sold this week for $4.05 a pound — about half the price of homemade.

Some Koreans are taking the kimchi crisis in stride, saying it is a blip in the market. At her food stall in the sprawling Mo Rae Ne market in western Seoul, Lee Young-ae still serves free kimchi to the vendors and laborers who come by for a $5 plate of roasted pig cheeks, blood sausage and her famous soondae soup.

“The prices will go down,” she said. “Sometimes they’re high, sometimes they’re low. Easy come, easy go. That’s life.”

The making of kimchi is more art than science, more a craft than a repeatable recipe. There are hundreds of variations, with varying ingredients, colorations, textures and levels of heat. As well as a condiment, kimchi is eaten in Korea as a main dish, in soups, stews or with fried rice. There are kimchi burgers, kimchi bacon rolls and kimchi pizza.

“Even if it’s pickled and fermented, if it’s your national dish and you’re in Asia, believe me, they’ll find a way to make it special,” said the celebrity chef Bobby Chinn, the host of World Café Asia, a travel and cooking television show. “For Asians it’s a popular alternative to salads.”

The cabbages are not usually shredded or dismembered, and the salted leaves are slathered with spices, sauces and pastes. The intact cabbages are then placed in earthenware jars and buried in the ground. (Apartment dwellers and urbanites now use stainless steel containers or special kimchi refrigerators.) The cabbages then pickle and ferment into the eye-watering dish served year-round in Korea, at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Most Koreans see kimchi as a staple food, even a daily necessity, a kind of health food. During the SARS panic in Asia in 2003, the rumor spread widely that kimchi was an effective antidote.

For most Westerners, however, kimchi remains an unacquired taste. It can offend not only with its taste but also with its odor, which can linger on a person for hours. And for those unused to its fire and fury, even a small dish of kimchi can appear less as a delicacy than as a kind of incendiary device.

“To a Western palate, with all the other options out there, kimchi won’t rank very high,” Mr. Chinn said.

A gathering was held in Seoul last week to promote Korean food, with European master chefs coming in for panels and demonstrations. Michel Troisgros, the renowned French chef from Roanne, listened to a Korean official hold forth on the wonders of fermentation and an ambitious project to export Korean foods like kimchi.

“I think you have to stop talking about fermentation,” Mr. Troisgros told the man. “It’s not sexy.”

 QUESTIONS~

1. What do you think is Korea’s most well-known food among non-Koreans? What other foods deserve a chance in the spotlight beyond kimchi?

2. Is really good kimchi hard to come by in America? Or is there a small shik-pum or ka-geh around here that sells kimchi just like halmonee used to make it?

3. Do you have a special food that you can make “better than anybody”? On which occasions do you usually make it?

4. Sometimes, we have a tendency to “Americanize” things like cultural foods from other countries: Taco Bell, even the obligatory Chinese buffet that serves spaghetti next to lo mein are great exampls.

a. What would be an example of Americanized Korean food? (For example, “cheese ddokbokki” has the American-inspired ingredient of cheese, right? But it’s still so delicious!)

b. Are there “Koreanized” American foods, too?

5. Store-brand and cheaper? Or homemade but pricier?

10.11 ~ Article

Fold it, wear it - just don’t toss it

By Sung So-young

October 08, 2010

“People thought paper furniture was something unique - but more now see it as a green product.”

You doodle on it, fold it, wrap it and play tic-tac-toe on it - some people even fold it into airplanes. But when brought to life, paper - more precisely, what it becomes - is a growing industry all on its own. With the expert touch of designers, paper is transformed into chairs, bookshelves, toys and even clothes.

One factor leading the trend is environmentalism, as consumers move away from plastic products, especially shopping bags, to recycled paper and more creatively engineered furniture and apparel.

Momot’s superhero paper toys are popular with kids. Provided by Momot Design Studio

Paper toys for kids

If you find Bearbrick or Sony Angel irresistible, Momot is for you. Momot means “nemo nemo robot” (nemo is the word for square in Korean) and this brand offers hundreds of paper toys with different faces and outfits. From monsters to dog-faced humans, celebrities and superheroes, Momot Design Studio creates all these 5-inch tall-and-zany toys all out of paper.

“[People] say they can’t believe these toys come from just paper because paper is two-dimensional, but these toys are three-dimensional. That’s their first reaction,” said Lee Joon-kang, a Momot designer.

Lee is a leader in the paper-toy trend and first came up with the idea to make toys out of paper for his industrial design graduation project at Hoseo University in Asan.

Taking a closer look at these paper toys, the details are as delicate as the folds are precise. One Momot named Street People is actually a series of figures that have ear piercings and wear bulky watches, Adidas Superstar gear and black caps. All his accessories are detachable.

“Feedback from all these people was great after the graduation project. Right after that, we received business proposals from a couple of companies,” Lee said.

This picture is one I found separately wanted to include; it shows the depth of these paper toys really well!

Oh, and is that SANTA CLAUS in lumberjack clothes?! Well, I guess when you have to make so many toys, you dress for comfort. ^m^

Here’s one more I found... Wouldn’t you love to get something creative and cute like this instead of candy on Valentine’s Day?

Or, to demonstrate deeper love, perhaps you can put some candy pieces and cutesy notes inside the Momot.

That was the beginning of Momot Design Studio. Clients now include Nike Korea and hip clothing brands such as DOHC and Feltics.

Of the many paper varieties, the design house said it uses ordinary vellum paper.

“If we use some other paper that has a glossy texture, Momot doesn’t look like paper toys - but plastic toys,” Lee said. “In order to let the rough and natural feeling of paper survive, we insist on using ordinary paper.”

Among its other products, crafted paper bags and boxes are becoming especially popular thanks to the government ban on plastic bags. By cutting out Momot patterns by hand, a simple box is turned into a Momot product.

The design studio operates an online shopping mall at www.momotstore.com. A single Momot can be as cheap as 3,000 won ($2.70).

Ynnos started making paper furniture for kids in 2007. Provided by Ynnos

Paper furniture for children

Kang Jae-won and Yu Su-young both made props and sets after graduating from college. After creating many different props, with anything imaginable, they found that paper had limitless potential as a raw material. Layers of paper are sturdy enough to handle a human being’s weight - but still light enough to be lifted with a finger.

In 2007, Kang and Yu launched Ynnos, a company specializing in paper furniture for children. Their brand is Funny Paper.

After years of research and development, Ynnos has begun offering chairs, stools, tables, bookshelves and toy houses made with cardboard.

“In the early days, people thought paper furniture was something unique - but an increasing number of people now see it as a green product,” said Oh Dan-bee, a Ynnos public-relations officer.

In case there was any doubt, the state-run Korea Environment and Merchandise Testing Institute put the products under the microscope, so to speak. It found that the furniture is strong enough to hold up to 300 kilograms (661 pounds).

“The biggest advantage is it contains no toxic chemicals, ” said Oh, adding that the furniture is very mobile and safe for children.

Questions:

1. Do you make origami?

• What kinds of paper-folding do you know how to do?
• Many people also make hundreds of a certain kind, such as lucky stars and cranes, collect them in a glass jar, and maybe give them to friends as presents. Think about this American saying: “It’s the thought that counts.” Would you rather receive a gift with more sentimental value or monetary worth?

2. Pictures of Ynnos paper furniture were hard to come by on the Internet, so instead…

• What’s the weirdest /most interesting /most cherished piece of furnishing or decoration in your room? 
• How long have you had it for? Where did you find it? What is the story behind it? Do you display it proudly or use it often? Or do you hide it away when people come over (just to make sure they don’t accidentally chip it or spill coffee over it)?

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE! 

Hopefully, my computer will be in tip-top shape in a couple of days :)

Pretty lights on the Nam

Hey everyone!

Today I found this beautiful picture taken on the Nam River in Jinju, South Gyeongsang. The "City of Lights," it's called? Apparently, all this colorful luminosity is in celebration of the 91st annual National Sports Festival!

• Has anyone been to this before? 
• Do you know something interesting about it? 
• Which are your favorite ones to see? 
• Is it a popular attraction among Korean people?

Please share in the comments!

Meeting on Oct. 4

(Just a little reminder to everyone. This was sent out to you by e-mail, too.)

Due to busy schedules, we will resume our regular Monday Meet on...Monday! The date is 10-4, the time and place are (roughly) the same. We will be going over the article+expressions we did not get to this week, so please review and read those if you have not done so yet. Additionally, I will send you one more shorter article to look at over the weekend, so be on the lookout for that.

I'm going home this weekend, so if you have anything you'd like me to check over for you, just shoot me an e-mail!

See you soon!