Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Korea Sparkling, Brighter

Action Plan from KoreaTimes
Everyone loves a good list, and this one is the product of a Korean government commission whose job was to identify ways for the Hermit Kingdom to improve its image in the world--its "brand". Frankly, I'm not sure how renaming all its Korean language schools to 'King Sejong Institute' is going to help things, but it's worth a shot, I guess. And, it's an easy one to check off the list.

After all, it's going to be a bit more difficult to achieve item #10 on the list, which this Korea Times article explains is to:
strengthen education of globally accepted norms and etiquette among citizens, according to the council.

Presumably, this means getting people to stop eyeing every foreigner as if he is an AIDS-infected drug kingpin out to destroy Korean society. And stop slurping their soup so loudly. And stop spitting. Indoors.

Curiously, the proposal calls for a "Korean wave" of sharing development how-to to emulate the success of Korean pop culture throughout Asia and the the world, yet does not mention capitalizing on the success of the actual Korean Wave.

I mean, the very same newspaper has an article about a Korean film winning the grand prize at France's Deauville Asian Film Festival. It mentions that another Korean film won there last year. I'm no PR specialist, but ...

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