The Grand Narrative

( “Abandoned” by lydurg)

Sorry to the dozens of people who’ve written comments and/or sent emails in the last few days, but I’ve been struck down with a terrible flu that confines me to bed when I’m not at work, and gives me pounding headaches whenever I so much as think about moving.

Please keep writing and/or sending them though, and I’ll answer them all as soon as I’m able. And keep visiting the blog too, because I’ve already got four posts scheduled to appear this week, wisely written back while I was still coherent.

Sigh. Back to trying not to pass out at my desk. On the plus side though, I’m very grateful that there’s no restrictions on medicines with weak speed pseudoephidrine hydrochloride in Korea…munch munch munch… 

(Update2: Those technical problems in turn mean that I can’t reply to a notorious troll over there, but fortunately his comments don’t really deserve a reply. Still, he’s no ordinary troll, and you have to admire his skill in trying to goad me into a response)

(Update: I’d like to thank bumfromkorea over at the Marmot’s Hole for telling me about Time and Cinderella, two movies that deal with the Korean plastic surgery industry. I would thank (probably) him there, but for some reason every time I write a comment on that post it just disappears)  

(“Liberty Leading the People“ by Eugène Delacroix)

Introduction

Today’s post is a bit of a light-hearted break from all the intense and/or very academic posts I’ve been writing recently, but I think that the points I’m making are still quite valid. Sure, if I’d wanted to convey that impression more effectively then probably I should have used a different title instead, but then I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t usually choose them with SEO in mind (Search Engine Optimization to non-bloggers). Sorry if that sounds a little cynical, but then consider this internet classic on the differences between what people say they read and what they actually do read on the internet. Meanwhile, if pictures of Lee Hyori are what you’re really after, then you’ll find plently to choose from here.

Korean Celebrity Culture 1: Different Standards

(Photo by lej pics. Yes, I know Lee Eun-ju/이은주 on the right committed suicide in 2005, but rather than making my choice of picture tasteless, actually I think that that illustrates my points all the more)

The original motivation for this post was my volunteering to translate this ”news” article about Lee Hyori’s recent chest X-rays for readers over at Dave’s ESL Cafe (I guess I’m a real glutton for punishment). I did last night, but PopSeoul! has already translated something very similar here, saving me the trouble of putting it up.

The article I translated is stupid, as is the endless speculation about whether or not Lee Hyori has received breast enlargement surgery: for one, you can see the before and after evidence for yourself here, and I discuss that in more detail here. Of course she has. Like I say there, I think she was very attractive without them, but they certainly didn’t harm her career, and while I may often sound critical of plastic surgery, I’m not against it per se. But why then, this endless, repetitive speculation? Because she refuses to admit it. Or rather, ironically, being a celebrity means that she’s not allowed to admit it, at least in Korea.

(Photo by mona)

I’ve already written a great deal about the differences between Western and Korean celebrity culture, so let me just give the briefest outlines of them here.

Discounting the big differences between Western countries, to a greater or lesser extent Westerners almost expect their celebrities to live hedonistic lives, and the public and the justice system as a whole gives them a great deal of leniency to do so that is not granted to ordinary mortals like ourselves. But Korea is the exact opposite, and female celebrities in particular are held to impossibly higher standards. Hence when it is revealed that they have taken drugs or had sex before marriage, for instance, then the public reaction is swift and severe, even if they didn’t actually do the heinous crimes of which they’re accused.

And so while Korea has one of the largest plastic surgery industries in the world, and a majority of women have had some form of operation or another, Koreans seem to want to keep this a secret from non-Koreans, and celebrities in particular definitely can’t admit to having received it themselves (with exceptions for aspiring stars).

I think that the movie 200 Pounds Beauty/미녀는 귀로워? is one of the rare popular Korean movies that draws attention to this (I discuss it here); if readers know of any others, please let me know. I also think that the dichotomy between the Korean public’s standards for themselves and for celebrities also partially plays a role in the their toleration of sexually-suggestive dancing and provocative clothes from the Wondergirls/원더걸스 too, because many parents, say, that regard both as innocent and cute would never tolerate the same from their own daughters. But after all the virtual ink I’ve already spilled on that, I’ll wisely stop there and let readers make their own judgements.

Korean Celebrity Culture 2: Promotion of the Mundane

(D-War/디워)

Amongst non-Koreans living in Korea at least, the both the Korean and especially English-language Korean media is notorious for portraying any cultural product destined for overseas consumption as world-class, on a par with Hollywood productions (if it is a film), and enthusiastically received by non-Korean audiences, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Gordsellar describes it as a “standard, near-universal conviction among Koreans that a positive image of Korea must be presented to the world”, and I myself (somewhere amongst these posts) have interpreted the effects of this on the Korean media to be its portrayal of the Korean Wave/한류 as Koreans would like it be received rather than it actually is, and even if this was the only problem the Korean media had, then it would be in a very sorry state indeed. Unfortunately, it’s not, as this and the following case reveals.

By this stage, you may well be asking how on Earth the Korean Wave is related to Lee Hyori’s breasts? Are they a cultural product? Well…yes. Consider this article about her trip to Hong Kong in 2003, but before you do, let me provide some background:

• Men like women’s breasts
• There are some men in Hong Kong
• Lee Hyori has breasts
• Lee Hyori went to Hong Kong

Therefore, even before the big event I would have bet money on some men in Hong Kong liking her breasts while she was there. An article about the test of that hypothesis is not news, and of course the fact that it was in a Korean tabloid also means that it wasn’t news too. But ironically, this celebration of Hong Kong men’s interest in Lee Hyori’s breasts is news precisely because it was in a Korean tabloid.

The mainstream Korean news media is amongst the most populist, unprofessional, racist and xenophobic in the world, and is more than happy to portray all non-Korean men as perverted, pedophilic sexual predators whenever it suits them, so you can imagine what the tabolid press is like. Not unsurprisingly, this means that many Korean men (but by no means all) are resentful of Korean women in relationships with non-Koreans. Hence KoreaBeat points out that it was simply bizarre that a Korean tabloid newspaper would revel in non-Korean men ogling one of “their” women, and I’m suprised that I didn’t notice the incongruity myself when I read it at the time.

Now, I’d be the last person to describe Lee Hyori’s breasts as mundane…but sorry, at the end of the day, they’re still just breasts. So considering all the above, is there any other explanation for the positive spin of the article other than the desire for self-promotion overriding the xenophobia, which, after all, is usually just a mere convenient device to use when Koreans want to deflect attention away from their own problems?

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Yes, again. Sorry. But the aim of the last change of themes was to make the blog easier to read, very important with such long posts penetrating and incisive commentaries on Korean social issues, and I think that this one is much better still.

Rant About WordPress.com

Actually, I would have chosen this theme earlier, but for being too attached to my previous custom header (no pun intended). Of course, I’d like use a theme that looks like this one and still allows me to keep the old header, but WordPress.com has very few available, and all themes seem to have myriads of small things wrong with them: if you switch from one to another that doesn’t the problems, new ones that the old theme lacked appear instead (ie, no header, quotes being in italics [translations don't look good], no tagline next to the title), and so ultimately every choice is a compromise. I think, like a lot of things in WordPress.com, that those annoyances are actually quite deliberate, the idea that bloggers start with and get used to the interface, but then, soon frustrated, choose to pay to get a self-hosted server via wordpress.org instead. Amongst other things, that has 16,000+ themes available, rather than the 60 deliberately flawed ones I’m stuck with.

Stats

I may too eventually, and recently bought the above book to figure out how to do so, but until I get over 1000 visitors a day I don’t really think I can justify the hassle of transferring this blog over to it. If you’re still reading this then you’re probably a blogger yourself, and I know that you’re intensely interested in a rival’s friendly blogging buddy’s stats, so now that they’re semi-respectable I think that I can reveal that mine are a pretty consistent 650-750 visitors and 900-1100 hits a day, and have been since late February. Actually, I’m working on trying to get out of that plateau I seem to be stuck on. Maybe I need to bring bikinis back…oops, already did that, albeit only in a tasteful and relevant sense that can’t really be repeated without being either (damn).

Update: If you’re really interested in my stats, then you need to get out more here they are in detail. They’re from Statcounter, which unfotunately only keeps my data for the last 500 visitors, so I’m sure that that the orange line representing returning visitors should really be much higher than it appears:

Anyway, hope you like the new theme, and if you don’t, well, please tell all your friends about the blog and help me to reach that magical 1000 visitor mark!

Have a nice weekend.

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  (Photo by publish9)

Anti-Communist Fashion

Unlike Part 1 and Part 2, this won’t be a stand-alone post; in just a moment, I’ll jump straight into outlining and discussing the the second part of Taeyeon Kim’s 2003 journal article “Neo-Confucian Body Techniques: Women’s Bodies in Korea’s Consumer Society“ as promised.

But before I do, I should mention that since writing those, I’ve started reading SeungSook Moon’s book Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea (2005) too, and it’s made me realise just how narrow a focus Kim’s article has. That’s not necessarily a criticism: in the 16 pages available to her, Kim does a good job of explaining how the 19th Century Joseon Dynasty’s Neo-Confucianist views of the female body were warped by, adapted to, and ultimately survived and prospered in the 20th Century. And that endurance does go a long way towards explaining the question I first posted in part one, namely why are Koreans so conformist in their fashion choices.

But what Moon’s book has made me also realise is that, however outlandish the connection sounds at first, today’s Korean fashion can’t be explained fully without mention of the postwar Korean state’s anti-communist ideology too. No, really.

(Photo by theturninggate)

Let me run with this for a moment. In a nutshell, Moon’s book showed this to me by giving me a more bottom-up perspective on life in postwar Korea than what I’m used to (decidedly top-down Troubled Tiger is one of my favorite books). The more I read about it, the more I learn just how pervasive that ideology was in people’s everyday lives, and how almost any form of legitimate dissent or creative difference was often regarded by the state as nothing short of “leftist” subversion. I could give you examples, like Korean men with long hair being publicly shaved in the 1970s, or the police checking that women’s skirts were long enough (an onerous job I’m sure, and strangely not as well-enforced as the former), but you get the drift. 

These attitudes didn’t suddenly dissappear upon democratization in 1987 either. In hindsight, it’s incredibly naive for me (or anyone else) to account for conformity in modern Korean life without reference to it. Even something as innocuous-sounding as fashion.

(Photo by superlocal)

(Update: I suddenly remembered this ad. But while it’s a good play on how the “rule” for miniskirts has completely reversed since the 1970s, the conformity remains the same. How else to explain wearing miniskirts in winter? An otherwise extremely wasteful use of the body’s resources to demonstre one’s physical prowess to mates, just like a peacock’s tail?)

But that will be the subject of later posts. First, let’s finish Kim’s article, sans political ideologies. After reading it, I recommend reading this recent post of the Metropolitician’s on Korean fashion too, as he discusses much the same things but from a different angle, and, lest you feel that I give too pessimistic and conformist an image of Koreans, he argues that Korean fashion and creativity have witnessed something of a watershed in recent years. Considering he photographs them 24/7, then he would know. My comment to that post is a pretty blatant plug for my blog for sure, but in my defence when I wrote it I was quite stoked to find that he was writing a similarly in-depth post about the same subject at the same time I was (the life of Korea-studies geek-blogger is a lonely one). Having said that, I don’t agree with everything he says, and I think I’ll devote a post to discussing what he wrote next week.

Honourable mention should be made of this post of Roboseyo’s post too, if you can get past the picture (it’s tough, I know).

The second part of Kim’s article starts by placing the endurance of Neo-Confucian images of women’s bodies in modern times in the context of the endurance of Neo-Confucianism in Korean society as a whole:

Confucian Fundamentalism and Korean Identity

(Photo by donut2d)

The first thing of note is that, despite how it may at first appear, the endurance of Neo-Confucianism in modern Korea is probably more because of Korea’s turbulent 20th Century rather than despite it, as fundamentalism of any stripe is usually a reaction against painful, forced transitions to modernity. As Kim says, in Korea’s particular case, Japanese colonisation and then civil war and division meant that its postwar search for national identity: 

…became essential to Korea’s postcolonial and post-war project for national reconstruction. Neo-Confucianism came to stand for essential ‘Koreanness’ and was quickly embraced as the authentic culture of Korea - so much so that challenges to Neo-Confucian principles were branded as threats to national integrity. Neo-Confucianism also maintained its gloss as part of the elite culture, and as more and more Koreans were becoming upwardly mobile, many strove to identify themselves with the former [elites], making what was originally an ideology and culture of the elite minority into the culture of all Koreans.” (pp.102-103).

Some other consequences of that quest for self-identity include Korea’s bloodline-based nationalism (although the origins of that were closer to 1900 than 1953), and military regimes deliberately nurturing the idea that Korea has suffered invasions more than most, both now counter-productive (to put it mildly). Ironically, for women it also ultimately meant a reaffirmation of the ideals of taegyo (태교), despite women’s entrance into the workforce for the first time and the nuclearization of the Korean family, for two reasons.

First, one, I think, increasingly under-appreciated aspect of postwar Korea ,was overcoming the psychological trauma of the physical dislocation and separation of Korean families due to the war, and until I started today’s post I didn’t realise that that could have affected Korean’s women’s postwar lives much more than men; remember that they weren’t really thought of as of as individuals in the Joseon Dynasty, and thus their families had been the primary source of their identity. But then, not only were they suddenly and violently brought out of the inner, private sanctum of those families and homes by the war, and then into the public sphere of schools and factories for the first time, those families also moved from the farm to the cities, and nuclearized in the process. Given those circumstances, it is natural to suppose that women might yearn for the good old days of certainty. 

(Photo by mookiechan) 

Second, while for a time women’s physical labour in factories came to be regarded (rhetorically at least) as just as important and useful as their traditional domestic work in the home (as was, I might also add, their equally “needed”, expanded roles as sex workers too; I’ll save that for a later post), ultimately:

with the advent of a post-industrial, consumer capitalist society in the 1980s, women became more important as consumers than as factory workers, shifting the utility of their bodies from national labour production to national consumption, becoming, in effect, what Byran S. Turner (1996) calls the capitalist body. (p. 102)

Korea, uniquely, is much less “post-industrial” then Kim thinks (see here), but that doesn’t detract from the basic point that women, once exhorted and educated to work in the factories, were once again extorted to stay at home upon marriage, and to then focus on producing and raising children. Seeing as a good third or so of the blog is about how the Korean economy and minimalist welfare system is predicated on that fact, then I don’t feel the need to elaborate on and justify that here. Instead, of note is how they are also urged to consume as housewives and mothers, both for the sake of national development, and for the sake of obtaining the items necessary to secure and advance their family’s social status, as explained in Part 2. Ergo, it’s taegyo all over again, although I’ll admit that it sounds neither particularly Korean or even Neo-Confucian at the moment.

(Photo by BoazImages)

The Ensuing Social Malaise 

But just like in Western countries after World War Two, you can’t expose most women to working life and equal education and then expect them to meekly return to the home once the economy and/or national emergency no longer requires their economic services; the contradiction leads to the appearance of various social malaises, such as the “housewives’ syndrome” that Betty Friedan so adroitly recognised in 1963. In Western countries, that recognition and the civil-rights movement led to Second-wave Feminism. But Korea has so far lacked the former, and is only just beginning to experience a form of latter, often more because of the signing and implementing of UN conventions on gender issues and so forth rather than domestic pressures. What unresolved social malaises then, have arisen in Korea?

(Photo by Lola Blue)

Kim argues that uprooted Korean women naturally found solace in new, postwar media images of women, and following the new rules of fashion was certainly easier and more personally satisfying to most women then embracing new, entirely alien concepts of liberalism, individualism and feminism to which Korea’s new relationship with America exposed them to. Hence:

The Neo-Confucian values of harmonizing as one, proper behaviour and self-cultivation, [re-emerged] in the guise of conformity, propriety and self-improvement. (p. 107)

But as we’ve seen, while self-improvement for men involved training of the mind, resulting in transcendence of the individual self, women were considered incapable of this. Hence women’s primary means of self-improvement came to center on the physical body instead, and this ultimately explains the why of today’s social malaises in Korea today, notably that:

• Many young Korean women feel compelled to wear mini-skirts in winter. Think with your head for a moment, and realise its not a good thing.
• Many Korean women have to wear make-up to work, upon fear of being fired.
• Korea has one of the biggest plastic-surgery industries in the world
• And in Korea, it is statistically more likely for a women to become a prostitute than a doctor, a lawyer, or even a schoolteacher. The prostitution industry here is that big.

Hence taegyo is Korean and/or Neo-Confucian, because while plenty, if not most, Western women consider getting plastic surgery for the sake of bettering their chances in job interviews and marriage prospects so forth, very few do explicitly for the sake of their father’s and or husband’s families.

Finally, now for the how.

Correcting the Flawed Eastern Female

(Photo by danostamper714)

I’ve already explained that Korean women tend to embrace conformity rather than individuality in their fashion choices, and articles about fashion in women’s magazines too are less “Western” than they may first appear. While opening paragraphs seem to promise articles “promoting liberation from the edicts of fashion, and self-expression over blind conformity,” for instance, what they actually do is set up strict guidelines for Korean women to follow, the authors often failing to recognise that their exhortations not to follow fashion magazines’ fashions, but their tastes and styles instead, actually amount to the same thing. Indeed:

What is right for [the authors] must be right for everyone else, for there is a blurry distinction between [the authors] and others, a legacy of the subjectlessness of the Korean woman. (p. 104, italics in original)

Sure, much the same can be said of Western women’s magazines, which Kim should have acknowledged. But remember the importance of the notion of “subjectless bodies” in Kim’s article (see Part 1), and that for Korean women the philosophical concept of the individual self, defined not by ki and the family but by the physical limitations of the corporeal body, is very new. Hence Korean authors and readers may not see the contradiction that their Western counterparts may. Moreover, articles often present:

what [they] consider to be particular features of the Korean women - short legs, big face, yellow skin - as problem features that can be corrected by certain types of clothing and colours….[they] imply that the imperfect Korean body is disordered but can be put back in order through the tricks of fashion. The body is something to be rearranged so its apparent flaws are concealed or eliminated. These flaws themselves stand out as imperfections because they are features unique to Koreans and absent in white models (p. 104, italics in original)

(Photo by Scoubi)

I could go on to discuss the details of huge plastic surgery industry in Korea, but it’s been done to death elsewhere, and I think the above photo and this article sum it up better than any virtual ink spilt on the subject. Having said that, numerous sources have claimed that Korean women’s desires to look Caucasian are the result of an inferiority complex towards and cultural colonization by the West, but I think that the impacts of these have been grossly exaggerated. Consider this:

All three elements, the Neo-Confucian woman’s subjectlessness, the perception of Korean bodies as imperfect, and fashion’s function to re-order the disordered Korean bodies, make Korean women’s bodies particularly prone to alterations, rearrangements and re-creations of the body. (p. 104)

The biggest thing I’ve gained from these writing this series of posts (and I just so happen to think that it’s quite an original point too), is that in that statement above you can replace “Korea” with China, Japan, and/or Taiwan, and that argument would still be just as valid. Arguing that their shared plastic surgery mania is because all four countries share a history of cultural colonization and have inferiority complexes towards the West is tenuous at best, and if even if true, surely it would mean that Korean men too, say, would aim to look more Western? But no, they don’t, and not even with the huge size of the Korean male beauty industry today. But all four countries do share a history of Neo-Confucianism. On that basis, is it too much of a jump to argue that the Neo-Confucianist combination above is precisely why plastic surgery is so popular amongst women in this part of the world?

(Photo by wongtai213)

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Introduction/Recap 

If you’ve lived in Korea for more than a couple of years, then you’ll probably have noticed that many Korean alcohol companies - and those that sell soju in particular - have recently gone from presenting innocent and virginal women in their ads to in-your-face sexual images instead. Hell it’s hard not to notice, and you certainly didn’t see ads like the above even in 2005, let alone when I first came in 2000. And I wrote that before I realised how see-through Lee Hyori’s clothes were.

I already have strong academic interests in Korean consumerism and feminism (see here and here for my most recent work on both), and I also happen to be a normal, albeit extremely virile, heterosexual male too, and the combination has meant I’ve already written a lot on the changes, most recently here and here. In those posts, I mentioned that I was puzzled by a recent ad (below) of Jeong Ryeo-won’s for the medicinal wine sansachun/산사춘, as the ads for that drink hadn’t explicitly been “sexualized” yet, and so my plan for my next posts on the subject was to find and translate articles about the Baesangmyun Brewery Company’s decision to hire her. Was the the ad still the exception, or was it part of the new rule?

I did quickly find some on that here and here, and most importantly found a series of four on alcohol advertisements as whole here, but most were either devoid of any real information and/or repeated similar articles that I’ve already translated. I was placed in a bit of an impasse, and realised that what I’d really like to do is look at more academic analyses of the recent changes, rather than repeated announcements of which companies have hired which stars for their new advertising campaigns. But unfortunately there’d be very little in Korean on those yet, let alone in English, and my Korean isn’t quite at that level yet anyway.

A New, More Sophisticated Narrative

But the impasse made me realise that there’s actually little more to say on the subject, other than:

• Yes, of course alcohol advertisements are becoming more sexual, starting with those for soju.
• You like them? Yes, me too. We should totally hang out sometime.
• Yes, they may signal and/or prompt a new social acceptance of sexual assertiveness by Korean women, but it’s too early to tell.

Did I miss anything out? I doubt it. So, I apologise, but I don’t think there’s really anything more to add. Sure, I won’t pretend that I wouldn’t like the hits that putting more posters of girls would bring, but would they bring actual readers?

The impasse was fortuitous really, as not putting posters up for the sake of mere popularity is in line with a direction I’d already been taking the blog in anyway. In a nutshell, I’ve written some damn good things on the blog recently, some of which I’ve spent weeks on and is at least at postgrad level, and I want them to be taken seriously. Hence it’s already been a good month since the last ever bikini graced my blog.

I was partially propelled in this direction because a female blogger recently singled me out and objected to some (unspecified) pictures of mine too. Seeing as she not only links to a blog with regular links to porn, but links to and recently met the owner of one that has porn (nothing against either blog though!), then I won’t lose any sleep over her hypocritcal comment (although I wish I hadn’t replied to it so politely). But I’ll admit that still she touched a nerve.

But having said that, this post, for instance, is about way women are presented in Korean advertisements, and that they’re not wearing much in them these days is the whole point, so I’m not going to, say, link to the ads instead of posting them to somehow pretend otherwise. True, the same can’t be said of some slightly risque pictures accompanying my last (academic) post on consumerism, but it’s a blog, dammit, not a textbook. What am I supposed to break the otherwise monotonous-looking text with? Puppies?

With that outline of my new blogging ethos out of the way then, onto the main subject of today’s post. 

Translation

While I have already covered most of the contents of the above articles like I said, the fourth one of that series of four is a actually quite a good summation of things, and so I’ve decided that I will translate it.

Because the article is longer than normal, I’ve changed the format of how I usually put translations up to make it easier to read, and because it mentions so many Korean actors that I’ve never mentioned before, I’ve provided links to their biographies when their names first appear too. But because I’ve written so about the subject already, I won’t be linking to earlier posts of mine as I go along; instead, if you’re a new reader and are interested, visit this category to find those.

[미녀스타와 술(酒)④]/Star Beauties with Alcohol ④

22 January 2008 

[이데일리 SPN 박미애기자] 주류 광고로 뜬 스타를 찾기란 쉽지 않다. 당대 톱스타들이 주류CF의 히어로 또는 히로인 자리를 차지하는 경우가 대부분이기 때문이다.

[E-Daily SPN, Park Mi-ae Reporting] These days, it is difficult to find a new star becoming famous through first appearing in advertisements for alcoholic drinks. This is because so many already famous stars appear in them now.

그런 점에서 주류 광고 메인 모델로 발탁된 연예인은 당대 톱스타 또는 유망 신예로 가능성을 인정받은 차세대 스타로 볼 수 있다.

This has a snowball effect, as alcohol companies react to each other’s star-based advertising campaigns by using already established stars and/or those that are most likely to become even more famous in the future in turn.

그러나 광고는 트렌드에 민감한 까닭에 모델 역시 그때그때 다르지만 주종에 따라서 선호하는 스타일에는 다소 차이가 있다.

Advertisements are still sensitive to trends however, and while alcohol advertisements may all look the same today there are slight differences between those for different kinds of alcohol.

일반적으로 소주는 맑고 깨끗한 이미지의 여성 스타를, 맥주는 젊은이들이 즐겨 마시는 술인 만큼 성별에 관계없이 트렌디한 스타를, 전통주는 제품의 특성을 효과적으로 나타내는데 적합한 스타를 선호해왔다.

In general, soju advertisements want to give off a clear, clean and bright image using female stars, beer advertisements use trendy stars of both sexes, and advertisements for traditional alcohols like to present their alcohol’s unique effects, and prefer stars appropriate for the individual drink.

◇  이영애에서 이효리로…소주에 부는 새로운 바람 / From Lee Young-ae to Lee Hyori…A Fresh Breeze in Soju Advertisements

▲ (L-R) Lee Young-ae, Kim Tae-Hee, Kim Ah-jung

대표적인 주류인 소주의 경우 참이슬 후레쉬는 이영애 박주미 김태희 성유리 남상미 등이 모델로 발탁됐으며 처음처럼은 이영아 구혜선 등이 모델 계보를 이었다. 소주의 깨끗하고 투명한 이미지와 어울리는 모델들을 기용해온 셈이다.

In the case of soju, Jinro has previously has previously hired stars such as Lee Young-ae, Park Joo-mee, Kim Tae-hee, Nam Sang-mi and so forth to advertise its well known brand “Chamisul Fresh“, while Doosan has hired stars such as Lee Young-a and Ku Hye-Sun to advertise its brand ”Like the First Time“. Stars that go well with soju’s clean and transparent or clear image have tended to be hired. 

그러다가 참이슬 후레쉬는 영화 ‘미녀는 괴로워’로 스크린 스타 반열에 올라선 김아중을, 처음처럼은 트렌드 아이콘 이효리를 모델로 발탁해 주류광고에 새 기운을 불어넣었다. 단아하고 정적인 이미지에서 벗어나 밝고 동적인 이미지로 변화를 준 것이다. 이러한 이미지 변신이 젊은 소비자들의 눈길을 끌며 제품에 긍정적인 반응을 불러일으키고 있다.

However, Jinro has recently hired rapidly rising “200 Pounds Beauty” star Kim Ah-jung to represent Chamisul Fresh and inspire a fresh, new image for it, and Doosan has hired has hired trend icon Lee Hyori to do for same for Like The First Time. In the past, these brands presented an elegant, warm image, but this has been changed in favor of a bright and active one. Young consumers have reacted positively to the new ads and confirm that they draw their attention to the products. 

◇  박지성 보아…성별 관계없이 당대 톱스타 / Park Ji-sung, Boa…The Present Generation of Male and Female Stars for Beer

맥주는 소비층이 비교적 젊은 편이다. 그래서 광고 또한 타깃 소비층이 선호하는 스타나 트렌디한 스타를 모델로 두는 경우가 많다. 맥스 모델은 장동건이며 하이트 맥주 역대 모델들은 원빈 전도연 이병헌 고소영 박지성까지 성별에 관계없이 당대 톱스타들이 활동해왔다. 특히 박지성은 2002년 월드컵 4강 신화로 축구 열풍이 불면서 이러한 분위기를 광고에도 반영, 모델로 기용하게 된 경우다.

Compared to those that drink soju, beer consumers tend to be young, and so there are many cases of beer ads using trendy stars to target these consumers. In addition to the current model for Max Beer Jang Dong-gun, Hite has also used male and female stars such as Won-bin, Jeon Do-yeon, Lee Byung-hyun, Go-so Young, and Park Ji-sung. For instance, when Korea reached the semi-finals of the Football World Cup in 2002, Korean National Team player Park ji-sung was hired to reflect Korea’s new football craze.

이후 톱스타 기용에서 소극적이었던 하이트 맥주는 최근 ‘아시아의 별’ 보아를 모델로 발탁함으로써 다시 톱스타에게 눈길을 돌렸다. 이번 하이트 맥주 광고는 솔직하고 시원한 맥주라는 컨셉 아래 보아의 취중진담 형식으로 풀어나가고 있다. 맥주를 마시면서 속내를 털어놓는 톱스타의 솔직담백한 모습이 친근함을 불러일으키며 눈길을 끌고 있다.

From that point on, Hite Beer, which used to be so passive in its hiring of stars for its marketing campaigns, now actively seeks “Asia’s Stars,” recently hiring the singer Boa to turn people’s heads. Her ads are the start of a new concept for Hite whereby the stars appear slightly tipsy and present a fresh, honest image of themselves while drinking the beer, and Hite hopes to draw consumers with this friendly, more human side of the stars.

◇  이미연 송강호…신뢰할 수 있는 스타 통해 제품 부각 / Lee Mi-yeon, Song Kang-ho…Boosting Advertisements’ Effectiveness by Using Trustworthy, Friendly Stars

▲ (L-R) Lee Mi-yeon, Kim Jung-eun, Jeong Ryeo-won

대표적인 전통주 브랜드 ‘산사춘’과 ‘백세주’는 제품의 특성 및 신뢰를 높이는데 적합한 모델들을 기용해왔다. 산사춘이 1대 모델로 이미연을 쓴 것도 그러한 이유에서다. 이전까지 주류 광고의 대부분은 남성 위주로 만들어져온 것이 사실이다. 산사춘은 당당한 이미지의 이미연을 모델로 발탁한 덕분에, 여성들의 술이라는 컨셉을 부각시킬 수 있었다. 이후 신은경 이효리 김정은 한가인 등이 산사춘 모델로 활약했으며 현재 20, 30대 여성들이 가장 닮고 싶어 하는 여성 스타 정려원을 9대 모델로 발탁해 좋은 반응을 얻고 있다.

Meanwhile, in recent years representative traditional Korean alcohol brands Sansachun and Baekseju have emphasized using stars that consumers consider particularly trustworthy, warm and friendly, starting with Lee Mee-yeon. Until then they had actually mostly used male stars, but after using such an elegant and commanding model, women started drinking Sansachun in much greater numbers. After Lee Mi-yeon, other stars and models hired have included Shin Eun-kyung, Lee Hyori, Kim Jung-eun, Han Ga-in, and the latest, Jeong Ryeo-won, is the ninth. Ryeo-won has in particular received a favourable response, and many women in their 20s and 30s report that they want to be like her.

(I realise that it may be difficult to believe that Lee Hyori was ever considered a trustworthy, homely, warm and friendly girl, but actually she only started her hypersexual image in the last few years or so. For more on that old, not unattractive image of hers, see here)

또 하나의 전통주 브랜드 백세주는 송강호 김상경 지진희 송일국 조승우 등이 모델로 활약했다. 백세주가 기용해온 모델들의 면면을 살펴보면 트렌디한 스타보다는 안정감 있는 연기로 신뢰를 쌓은 배우들이 주로 활동해온 것을 알 수 있다.

However, the Baekseju brand has continued to use only men, including Song Kang-ho, Kim Sang-kyung, Song Il-gook, and Cho Seung-woo. Rather than using trendy stars, through them Baekseju wants to give off a strong, stable, and reliable image. 

(Which I’m not entirely sure the company managed to do with that ad!)

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Some light relief in between some of my more academic posts.

(Photo by nico.cavallotto) 

This site I found back in October remains the most bizarre and captivating thing I’ve ever seen on a computer, but this new one of a woman following your mouse pointer certainly comes an honourable second. It’s a personality test in a way, as you’ll probably either feel compelled to watch her for at least 5 minutes, or else completely bored in about 15 seconds. Naturally, I’m more the former, especially when I stopped moving the mouse for a moment.

Found via Japundit, who has a few more details about it. Make sure to give both sites a chance to load, and yes, I agree, the smile does need a bit more work!

(Update: Maybe it’s best watched at night, when it feels a little creepier)

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(Still from the movie Dasepo Naughty Girls/다세포소녀, by tokyohanna)

“Koreans are conformist because of their Confucian heritage…yada yada yada” 

Even though I’ve chosen to live in Korea a long time, like most expats I still often find it to be a frustrating and exasperating place. Actually I don’t think that that’s necessarily a criticism, and this love-hate relationship may even be part of it’s charm; certainly my adopted hometown of Auckland, New Zealand, never aroused such strong emotions in me.

On the other hand, it leads to so many one-liners about the place, endlessly repeated in the same expat bars by fresh rotations of teachers, and I’ve been on a bit of a roll critiquing many in the Korean blogosphere recently, both positive and negative (see here and here). Still, that’s not to say that they’re always wrong, or that I don’t sometimes use them myself. Indeed, today I’m going to examine one that I and probably most readers have made at some point in our stay here, but which I personally wouldn’t have been able to justify before I did my research for this post.

What I have in mind is your gut reaction to watching this commercial, about three years old:  

According to Marmot’s Hole commentator mins0306, to whom I’m very grateful for finding the video, the message the commercial wanted to convey was “What she selects will become a trend. And since she selected a Prugio apartment, Prugio apartments will also become a trend.” Instead, it has inadvertantly become of a symbol of Korean people’s conformism, particularly of women’s attitudes to fashion.

But before writing this post, had I been pressed for why so many Korean women seem to so blindly follow the latest trends, be they mini-skirts in winter or getting double-eyelid surgery, I would have mumbled something about Confucianism and the education system discouraging individuality. That is still technically correct, but - let’s face it - most of us blame so much here on Confucianism, but actually know little more about it than what we read in Lonely Planet Korea in the week before we came. But how, exactly, is it to blame? Why?

On the surface, it may not even have anything to do with Confucianism at all. Consider this statement from the 2003 journal article “Neo-Confucian Body Techniques: Women’s Bodies in Korea’s Consumer Society” by Taeyon Kim (details and abstract here):

“For 500 years, Korea adopted Neo-Confucianism as its official ideology and strove to create a Neo-Confucian state by following its precepts as closely as possible. Neo-Confucians believed the body was sacred. Since it was bequeathed by one’s parents, in accordance with filial piety, the body had to be respected and remain unaltered…The Korean aversion to manipulation of the body seems to have been a long-standing cultural principle - only whole-heartedly abandoned in the last few years of proliferating plastic surgeries and various other manipulations of the body. Why has what appears to have been such a strong cultural value been so suddenly and completely abandoned?” (p. 98)

(Photo by !°jeon ji-hyun)

Like I said, I didn’t know that Joseon Dynasty Korea adopted ”Neo-Confucianism” rather than merely “Confucianism” its state ideology either; from now on, I’ll make sure to blame all Korean ills on that instead. But now that she mentions it, yes, I do recall that Confucianism…oops, Neo-Confucianism I mean…did not condone alteration and adornment of the body, which is why it was so dishonourable for men to have their ponytails cut off.

How then, can Korea still be described as “more Confucian than China” when Korean women adorn fashion and accessories to the point of what Michael Hurt describes as “fetishization,” female friends of mine wear excessive make-up to work upon fear of being fired if they don’t, others think nothing of wearing it to the gym, and Korea leads the world in the number of plastic surgeries made per capita? The notion now sounds absurd.

But Kim goes on to argue that the prescribed Neo-Confucian role of women’s bodies is essentially the same today as it was in the Joseon Dynasty, albeit adapted to and/or warped by democratization and capitalism. I don’t entirely agree with everything she says, but more in degree than in substance, and she certainly does make a decent stab at solving that paradox above.

Because her two-part argument is very long, and I actually have a lot of my own thoughts and ideas to add to her arguments about postwar Korea, I’ve taken the wise (but unusual for me!) decision to split my original 3500 word post on her journal article into two. In the remainder of this first one then, I’ll outline what Kim says about how Neo-Confucianism viewed women’s bodies and their roles, and in the next one I’ll discuss how these adapted and changed to, but ultimately survived, the 20th Century.

Neo-Confucian Women’s Bodies as Mere Vessels

(Photo by natebeaty)

Before reading the following, bear in mind that only Joseon Dynasty elites - possibly as little as 1% of the population - would have subscribed to the Neo-Confucianism edicts described (Kim does acknowledge this). But the vast majority of Korean women worked on their farms, and were integrral economic parts of the household; I’ve won arguments with older male students of mine on this point, who thought that “Korean tradition” justified them in literally forbidding their daughters-in-law from working after marriage. I concede though, that they remained an ideal.

“To understand the Neo-Confucian body, it is essential to understand the concept of ki. A material force which links the body and mind into one system, ki flows through all things, giving them form and vitality….There is no distinction between the self and the universe. Neo-Confucian men were encouraged to let go of ego and become selfless, that is to have no consciousness of an individual and separate self apart from others….Ki was passed from parent to child throughout the generations, acting as a material link between ancestors and descendants….The family composed a unified body through ki, and the identity of the family and self and family was continuous and undifferentiated.” (p.99, italics in original)

For learners of Korean, this “ki” appears to be “기,” which has a hanja character on p.38 of my Korean vocabularly bible that, in addition to “spirit,” also means “air,” “atmosphere,” and “energy.” And for everyone, I admit, at the moment it sounds very similar to a mere family name or bloodline, but those are quite vague concepts at best, whereas ki does sound like a well-thought out, albeit sexist and flawed, philosophical concept. Elaborating on it further:

“The force of ki constituted one’s sense of the body and self more than the corporeal body. It followed that the family body, within which flows the same ki,was considered the essential self more than one’s own physical body. The emphasis on non-distinction between self and others produced a sense of self that was non-individuated and fluid, with no boundaries to determine a distinction between one’s family and one’s self.” (p.99)

Hence the Hoju System/호주제, a family registry system, rather than one of individual birth certificates like in Western countries, that was not abolished until as late as this year. Under it, upon marriage, women would be transferred from one family’s certificate to her husband’s family, almost like property. In practice, female divorcees suffered greatly from it because:

• Given that it was often required for job applications, it meant that applicants’ marital status was readily apparent to employers. I’ve read, but am not sure how applicable it is now given the high divorce rate, that female divorcees were often discriminated against by employers as a result, ironically at a time when most would have needed employment more than ever.
• Custody of children was overwhelmingly awarded to fathers; after all, the women were no longer part of the ki/family.
• For those women married to fathers that abandoned their families, divorcing them would mean years of adminstrative problems with children in schools and so forth, as it meant that they were no longer their legal guardians. In Japan, with a similar system, these issues came up with ex-prime minister Koizumi after he divorced in 1982.

Promising to abolish this system was one reason I supported the election of Roh Mu-hyon back in 2002, and while he did prove to be quite a lame duck president, and least this promise was fulfilled. To continue:

“Neo-Confucian techniques of self-cultivation of the mind and body only applied to men. Women in the Neo-Confucian view were incapable of achieving sagehood and therefore had neither the need nor the ability to strive for transcendence of the self and body. While men produced their selves through the mind (study of the classics) and body (maintenance of the family body through ancestor worship), women were occupied with maintaining and reproducing the family body through the corporeal bodies of the family.” (p. 100)

(Photo by theturninggate)

Koreans are by no means alone in having philosophic or religious beliefs justifying an inferior status of women, but this particular one could lead to some very strange-sounding results. For instance, Kim explains that one study of a villagers in 1990 found that they thought women were inferior to men because they did not carry the ki that men did, meaning that “women were believed to be passive receptacles of the life which men implanted in them; they played no active part in creating life.“

It also meant that beauty and wealth were secondary to possession of the physical traits required to bear sons, and gave rise to an elaborate system of prenatal education known as taegyo/태교 which, rather than the notion of women and child’s health that the word brings to mind today, back then was more the idea of women as bodies rather than subjects or individuals, because “their conduct and thoughts were for the sake of the other abiding in their bodies, and they were valued mostly for the children and labour that their bodies could produce.” Hence, women “were regarded as subjectless bodies.” (pp. 100-101). The consequences of this were, in sum, that:

“While [men] aimed to transcend the body, women could never do so - their bodies were too valuable. A man’s mind and ki were considered more valuable than his corporeal limbs while a woman was most valued for her body and its reproductive labour. As a result, efforts were made to maintain sole control over women’s bodies, subjecting them to a protection and concealment that practically rendered their bodies invisible.” (p.101)

(Photo by simisvetik)

Indeed, while the hanbok is much more comfortable to wear and walk around in than a kimono (or so I’ve heard), it’s not exactly a celebration of the female form. Also, this protection and concealment literally meant that elite women’s homes became prisons, as they weren’t allowed to leave: those “traditional see-saws,” for instance, were actually so popular because they allowed elite women rare glimpses of life outside of the walls of their courtyards, and I remember reading somewhere of a woman escaping from her village to Busan during the Korean War, despite all the death and destruction around her actually having an exciting time, as it was the first time she’d left her house in decades!

And in the original (long) post I began my discussion of postwar Korea on that note, so I’ll end this post here. Part 2 will be up on Friday the weekend early next week.

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(”Lick Me Baby” by Renato Piereck)

Back on Wednesday I briefly discussed an advertisement for the Korean drink sansachul that confused me, for the drink had always been marketed towards women, but that particular ad was clearly aimed more at men. I wondered if it was just me that saw the ad that way, or if it was part of a new marketing strategy by the Baesangmyeon Brewery Company that made it, and promised to find press releases and translate them next week to find out. I’ve decided to begin now instead though, partially to practice Korean, and partially to displace the previous post about problems with a troll (still important, but it’s not good for first impressions to have it at the head of the blog).

I’ve also found much much more than I thought, and I’ve realised that the subject combines well with many books and journal articles on consumerism and women’s issues in Korea that I’ve read and had sitting around in my apartment for years, but never really had a chance to blog about. So then, practicing Korean vocab, a combination of light translations and serious academic posts (but easily less than 1500 2000 3000 words), the word “sex” easily insertible into most post titles…what more could a geekish, hit-seeking blogger want? Hence I’ve decided to run with the topic for a while, probably at least until my Korean test in 5 weeks. I’m looking forward to writing about it, but in passing I must apologise, for doing so marks the end to any pretence that I will eventually cover the subjects promised earlier in the year. Apologies to those readers interested in them, but in hindsight some subjects are simply not bloggable, either because of the dry subject matter or the length of the posts required.

Having said all that, tonight’s translation is rather short and easy, primarily to get the ball rolling. Apologies if some readers don’t like the format, but I’ve returned to including translations directly under each line or paragraph again. There will be the odd mistake, and I think that presenting them this way makes it much easier for myself and others to spot them and correct them. And please do let me know if you find anything or have any questions about the translations; even in the rare case that I’ve made a perfect translation in a technical sense, choices of the equivalent English words can still be very subjective.

정려원, 이효리 김아중과 ‘전쟁‘…‘산사춘‘ 9대 모델

War with Jeong Ryeo-won, Lee Hyori and Kim Ah-jung…Sansachun Announces it’s Ninth Model

(12th December 2007)

배우 정려원이 (주)배상면주가의 대표 브랜드 ‘산사춘’의 9대 모델로 발탁되었다.

A Baesangmyeon Brewery Company spokesperson has announced that the company has selected actor Jeong Ryeo-won to be the ninth model to lead an advertising campaign for its drink sansachul. 

배상면주가 측은 “정려원이 이미연, 신은경, 이효리, 김정은, 한고은, 한가인, 황보라, 윤진서 등에 이어 산사춘 광고 모델로 뽑혔다”고 밝혔다.

According to the spokesperson, previous models used in advertising campaigns have included, amongst others, Lee Me-yeon, Shin Un-gyeong, Lee Hyori, Han Go-un, Hwang Bo-ra and Yun Jin-seo. (James: you can see all of them here).

배상면주가 브랜드를 거친 모델 중에 이효리와 김아중(자청비)이 현재 소주 시장을 양분하는 ‘처음처럼’과 ‘참이슬’의 모델로 활동하고 있어 연말 미녀들의 주류 전쟁이 이어질 것으로 보인다.

Lee Hyori and Kim Ah-jung, previous models that have represented the Baesangmyeon brand (Kim Ah-jung was in ads for the drink jachungbi- see below), currently represent rival soju drinks ‘Like the first time’ and ‘Chamisul’ respectively, and have split the soju market (James: read more about that here)

정려원은 지난달 26일 포스터 촬영을 했고 12월 7일 TV 광고 촬영을 마쳤다.

New posters of advertisments featuring Jeong Ryeo-won started apprearing on the 26th of November, and the shooting of TV commericals finished on the 7th of December (James: here’s one of the commercials below).

이번 포스터 및 TV 광고 촬영에서 자연스러운 표정 연기와 부드러운 몸짓을 통해 밝고 명랑하고 스타일리쉬한 매력을 발산하며 주체적 여성의 모습인 산사춘의 캐릭터를 잘 표현해냈다는 평가를 받았다.

In the shooting of these posters and TV commercials, the company wants Jeong Ryeo-won to present a bright, cheerful and stylish image through natural expressions, soft gestures, and especially to express sansachun’s basic feminine character and appeal.

And so there you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth. But if you think I was over-analysing Jeong Ryeo-won’s advertisement I include in that earlier post, then let me present you with this one of Kim Ah-jung’s for jachungbi below, also supposedly marketed towards women:

You don’t need to have bought a body language book by Allan Pease (although it’ll easily be the best use of $15 you’ll ever make) to know that she’s standing in the female equivalent of the sexually-aggressive “Cowboy Stance.” The question is why? Is the drink, in fact, aimed more at men? Or is the idea that women would want to emulate the attractive, sexually-aggressive woman in the ad? I suspect (and wholeheartedly applaud) the latter, but my point made in earlier posts is that the latter is relatively new in alcohol advertisements here, although it has been around for many different products on TV for years, most notably in ads featuring Jeon Ji-hyun/전지현 (see here for examples). Does that trend now being replicated in print media mean that it’s becoming (relatively) socially acceptable for women to publicly (very many always did privately) assert themselves romantically and/or sexually in Korea? Or is it all just “porn-chic” transplanted from the West, where skin, simulated sex in music videos, and just general sluttiness is almost de rigeur for female celebrities now? If so, not even I would argue that it’s “empowering” somehow.

(Update: If anyone’s interested in the beginnings of the porn-chic phenomenon, the 1999 New York Times article “The Mainstream Flirts With Pornography Chic” is a good place to start)

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(Bigger version available here) 

On the way home from my local university district last week, I noticed this Chamisul/참이슬 soju advertisement of Kim Ah-jung/김아중’s being put up outside all the bars and restaurants:

(Better versions of this and similar posters available here)

For those that don’t know, Kim Ah-jung is a front-line soldier in Korea’s ‘Soju Wars,’ and a few months ago I wrote a post about what soju advertisements largely featuring innocent, virginal looking women and those for beer featuring “manly” men say about drinking culture here, and especially societal notions of “appropriate” expressions of sexuality. Those earlier posts cover those issues in a lot of detail; today’s post is mainly just about some things I’ve noticed since.

First up, I agree, “innocent and virginal” wasn’t the first thing that came to mind when I saw that poster either. But that is precisely what makes this ad so interesting, as all of her previous ads in the series had been up until now - in a way, hers had been the last bastion of male-targeted ads that had presented women like that. New readers might justifiably argue that I’m reading too much into that one ad, but then compare these (mostly) older, more traditional ones still hanging up inside those bars as it was going up: 

True, not all of those are for beer or soju, and given that the decidedly non-virginal Lee Hyori/이효리 was in the third picture, working for a rival company, then the new emphasis on Kim Ah-jung’s “S-line” and the placement of her hand in response was pretty predictable.

In the meantime, the third picture from the bottom is for the medicinal wine Sansachun/산사춘, something also very much on my mind recently. Judging by past commercials, it appears to be primarily marketed towards women, but then I only started thinking about it in the first place because of this now ubiquitous poster with Jeong Ryeo-won/정려원 in it:  

The TV commercials are still definitely aimed towards women, but surely it’s not just me thinking that something’s amiss in that ad? A female friend thought nothing of it, but I still can’t help but think that that particular one would appeal more to men…it certainly works on me. Is the idea that men would like women who drink it? What do readers think?

I’m also tempted to talk about Bronwyn Mullen appearing in so many idiotic beer commercials recently too (example below), but I’ve only just started watching Global Talk Show/미녀들의 수다 to study Korean with, and besides which, Matt at Gusts of Popular Feeling is better qualified then I to write about the subject of non-Koreans on television (see here and here for why). I’ll concentrate on Jeong Ryeo-won instead then, and will find and translate some “news” articles about the new Sansachul ad campaign next week.

Finally, I’d like to refocus on Kim Ah-jung, because less than half an hour after I saw those soju posters of hers, I saw these pictures of her from her school days on the internet:

No, I’m not going to laugh at her for her decidedly unglamorous high-school looks (I can hardly talk), nor lambaste her for (clearly) having had a lot of plastic surgery, which is pretty routine for average Koreans, let alone celebrities. But having watched 200 Pounds Beauty/미녀는 괴로워, like most people enjoying it despite myself, “art imitating life” can’t help but spring to mind after seeing the pictures?

By coincidence, I recently read over at Dramabeans that she’s considering starring in a sequel, which revolves about her regaining the weight. But although the soju ads may arguably have been her most successful “project” since the original movie, I personally predict that a sequel would be a disaster. After all, fat jokes weren’t the reason why so many people liked the first one…but a sequel that probably concentrates on them? Sounds like it would be a Korean version of The Nutty Professor, and about as successful.

If you’re interested in images and the media treatment of women in Korea, and if you’re still reading this despite the unflattering pictures above then you probably still are, then I recommend that you also read Dramabean’s post about real life “200 pounds beauty” Kim Mi-Ryeo/김미려. Unfortunately, real life didn’t quite imitate art in her case.

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