Sexist Korean Advertisements?

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Introduction: A Return to Korean Advertising

Recently it seems that I’m becoming known in the blogosphere as “the man to turn to for Korean sexism”  (see here, here and here for instance), ironic considering how I could be relied upon to provide precisely that just a few short months ago; I guess I’ve redeemed myself. Alas, not before corrupting Brian in Jeollanam-do though.

But seriously, thanks for the links. Inspired by those and things like this book I’ve just read, and further encouraged by this recent post by Matt at Gusts of Popular Feeling too, I’ve decided that I’m going to return to writing about the Korean advertising industry. There’s quite a lot to cover (no pun intended), and so that and my series on the military and gender will probably take up the bulk of my posts for the next two months or so.

As for the former, I’m hopefully going to begin writing much more thoroughly researched, academically rigorous, and above all coherent posts than the previous (image-heavy) ones I did for, say, the increasing sexualization of alcohol advertising in Korea. Not that there’s much in them that I wouldn’t still say today, but I’ll be the first to admit that some of them could do with major rewrites. Rather than going back and doing that though, I’ll wisely focus on writing posts on the subject that will hopefully become much more widely read (as opposed to looked at) instead.

Another thing that inspired me was the following flash video presentation by the US National Organization for Women (NOW), which has hopefully made some progress towards loading as you’ve been reading this:

( Found via MsParkerinKorea )

Assuming you’ve watched that, I’d like to draw your attention to these and these Korean advertisements for the Cyon “Bikini Phone” in the opening image to this post that the presentation instantly reminded me of (warning: some are not really safe for work, which is telling in itself). You may also find these Western advertisements that NOW considers offensive to women interesting too. For now, please make your own conclusions about them, and I’d be interested in hearing your opinions and will try to incorporate them into my first “proper” post on the subject sometime towards the end of the week.

But please don’t get the wrong impression. While I agree with and/or sympathize with many of those points raised by NOW, I am a guy and I’m not hypocritical, and so for the life of me I just can’t bring myself to be offended by the Bikini Phone advertisements. I’m more interested in how similar they and others like them are to Western ones these days, and the differing ways in which changes in the Korean advertising industry are driven by international and domestic imperatives. Again, I recommend this post by Matt to see where I’ll be going on the latter.

Korean Translations

( Image Credit: Cuzcco )

Meanwhile, the next TOPIK Korean test is in 74 days. I won’t bore you with all the trials and tribulations of my Korean study these days; suffice to say that as my second daughter is due a few weeks after the test, and so it will probably be my last chance to pass an advanced level for quite a while. With that in mind, I’m restarting my old study habit of translating Korean articles every day and posting them on the blog, but with some important differences to the last time(s):

• Posts with translations will not be about learning Korean or translations per se; rather they will be on and add to subjects that I already blog about. For that reason, while I will provide the original Korean because it helps my “Korea Guru” image so that my translations can easily be checked, my translations will no longer be literal (best for fellow students of Korean), but instead will be completely rewritten afterwards, only with English speakers interested in the subject (and not in learning Korean) in mind. Probably a good habit for employment in the future.
• I’ll post translations randomly, in addition to normal posts, sometimes with commentary and sometimes not. That doesn’t mean I’m going to post up things which merely helped me practice Korean but which nobody will want to read; they’ll all be relevant like I said, and my larger aim is to provide resources for people, much like I have dozens of KoreaBeat’s translations favorited on my desktop and ready to read and link to when I write posts on related subjects.
• The emphasis will be on Korean opinions rather than news articles. I can usually find plenty of stuff in English on the subjects I blog about about, but still largely absent from my posts on Korea are any thoughts and opinions from actual Koreans themselves. And as I learnt from Robert Koehler and Michael Hurt in a podcast years ago, things Korean that non-Koreans discuss and criticize Koreans invariably do too, and it’s largely only a language gap that makes them appear as monolithic and unthinking as they sometimes do…really, sometimes I can be just as guilty as any Itaewon-dwelling expat of making generalizations about them.

Those, my series on gender and the military, and my new series on Korean advertising will take up the bulk of the summer then.

And here is my first translation. I was looking for things about sexist Korean advertisements (and have quite a backlog to translate already), but found myself at work yesterday with only this quick blog entry from 2005 about the prostitution of Korean female entertainers in 1995 printed out instead. Not really what I wanted, and I’m already partially breaking my rule about relevance by posting it sorry, but it’s not uninteresting in itself:

해외동포 연예인 붐을 일으킨 재키림의 10년 전 사진

Jackie Lim, The Creator of an Overseas Korean Entertainer Boom

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삼성은 하이버네이션 기능 때문에 안정성에 문제가 많은 그린컴퓨터를 얼른 단종시키고 매직스테이션이라는 새로운 브랜드를 선보였는데, 매직스테이션은 꽤 오래 출시되면서 장수 브랜드로 자리 잡았다.

Because the “hibernation” function was causing many problems with stability, Samsung quickly stopped producing “Green computers” in 1995 and launched a new brand called “Magic Station” instead, which became a very successful brand over the next ten years.

매직스테이션III의 광고모델은 당시 새롭게 떠오르던 해외동포 연예인인 재키림이다. 몇 개 국어를 자유자재로 구사할 수 있었던 재키림은 재원이라고 칭찬받으며 화려하게 연예계에 데뷔했다. 재키림은 SBS ‘생방송 TV 가요 20′, KMTV ‘동방특급 비디오자키’ 등을 뛰면서 가수와 비디오자키로 활동했다. 재키림은 비디오자키의 열풍을 일으켰을 뿐만 아니라 오늘날의 해외동포 연예인 붐을 일으킨 불씨가 되었지만, 정작 본인은 한국 연예계에 적응하지 못하고 방황으로 얼룩진 비운의 운명을 걷게 된다.

Jackie Lim was a new and upcoming star when she appeared in the “Magic Station 3″ advertisement in 1995. As she was fluent in many languages she received a lot of attention and praise when she made her original debut, both starring as a singer and working as “video jockey” on the SBS program “20 Songs On Air” and KMTV’s “High-Class Eastern Video Jockey”. Ultimately she proved so popular she provided the spark for a boom in interest in overseas Korean entertainers. But she soon found it difficult to adapt to the Korean entertainment industry, and became a bit lost for which direction to take herself and her career.

재키림은 마약을 비롯한 좋지 않은 사건에 휘말리는데, 그녀가 이런 사건에 빠진 이유는 ‘한국에서 실력으로 활동하려 했지만 자신을 성적대상으로만 보면서 높은 사람 자리에 불려나가야 하고, 동료연예인들로부터 왕따당하면서 외로워서 약을 하게 되었다.’고 밝혔다. 재원이라고 떠들었던 뒷편에는 여성 연예인에 대한 여전한 성차별과 고위권의 압력, 동료 연예인의 텃세가 있었던 것이다.

Later, she became disgusted and further disheartened by trying to succeed as a singer in Korea through her own abilities but while facing the virtual prostitution of female entertainers that goes on behind the scenes. Not only was she regularly pressured to entertain and provide sexual services for politicians and business leaders, who saw her merely as yet another trophy girlfriend to be used, but on top of that she was also ostracized by other entertainers too, angered by whom they saw as an uppity overseas Korean whom they intended to put in her place. In the end she became very lonely and depressed and got involved with drugs.

이미지: 1995년 삼성 매직스테이션3 광고에서 밝게 웃는 재키림. 하지만 이 웃음 뒤에는 잘못된 연예게 관행으로 인한 외로움과 고통이 숨어있다.

Photo caption: Jackie Lim smiling brightly in Samsung’s advertisement for the Magic Station 3. But hidden behind the smile there was a great deal of loneliness and pain caused by the Korean entertainment industry’s bad practices.

If anybody wants to know more about Jackie Lim and what happened to her, let me know and I’ll translate what else I can find. Meanwhile, I wonder how different the Korean entertainment industry really is a decade later?

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