Airing some Grievances

I know I complain a lot about Korea. Trust me, you would as well, if you had to live in these conditions. Just imagine it...being surrounded by foreigners, all the time, who write almost all of their signs in English but then don't speak a lick of it when you enter the store! This is my life on a daily basis.
Whenever cruising the internet, which seems less and less packed with foreigners and unsavory types with every generation of security software, I come across numerous rollovers, banners, and sidebar ads. It wouldn't seem that strange if a single one of them made sense. That, however, is not the case. Let's take this first one for example.

A hair remover product, right? Seems to make sense. All men have hair...not all of them want it all... so make a hair remover product. Where the rub lies, is that the photo is of a man with a freshly shaved face, which is in fact SO shaved that it is sparkling. What's the name of the product? SMOOTH LEGS. I cannot possibly be the only person who is infuriated by this. I might be in the market for a hair remover for my face. Would I ever be caught dead with a bottle of 'Smooth Legs' hoisted victoriously as I squeeze it onto my face and spread it around? Folks...I usually don't speak in these tones here. This is a family website! Some things just don't need to be discussed...they need to be destroyed.
This next one isn't so much an advertisement in the traditional sense, since we have been dealing mostly with the internet lately and its inherent wizardry. A departure will take us to a traditional Korean market, where the purveyors of nature's bounty come to peddle their wares to the community. That sounds all well and good. But have you ever seen a table covered in assorted sea creatures?

Now, I admit that I have no idea what is going on on that table but I can guarantee you that whatever it is would NEVER happen in America. Have you ever seen just...pieces of dead animals thrown- no- POURED onto a table? Doesn't that look good? Just get a craps stick and pull it into a thin paper sack. Don't worry if it falls out onto the ground, that's probably where it was before it was on the table! Ug...the worst part about this is that I know for a fact (without literally knowing for a fact) that this was the humble beginning of every single fantastic seafood meal I have EVER eaten, without exception...and that fact makes me sad inside.
Moving on!
Do you like donuts? Do you? GOOD. Because they are apparently 100% here. 100% what, I don't know. They are, somehow, some kind of great health food for women. There is this obsessive compulsion towards marketing really, really unhealthy food towards women, as if love will make it healthy. This is all thinly veiled under the guise of being 'well being' food. Take the following ads into consideration.

This ad comes from a huge pizza chain in Korea called 'Mr. Pizza'. They are well known in Korea for highly imaginitive pizza...but they must be known everyplace else (mainly, every other place on earth that has ever eaten a pizza, ever) for crafting intense psychadelic pizza experiences on a regular basis. Secret Garden...first off, the pizza is potentially named after a book wherein a child's parents die, leaving her in the custody of a distant relative who habitually abandons her. Mmmmm. Anybody else hungry? The girl then apparently finds solace by stealing away to a secret hiding place where she swallows handfuls of Quaaludes, lights her clothes on fire, raids the fridge, and cooks highly confused pizzas with whatever edibles are available.

Now, in Dunkin' Donuts defense, I cannot read any of this. However, I assure you that I would not have brought this to your attention unless I was as sure as they are about (something about) these donuts that this ad is pushing donuts on the unsuspecting women of Korea. Now, what could 100% be? Trans fat-free? Does that necessarily make something healthy? I guess so. So hey, have a 100% healthy breakfast consisting of a fat donut and a cup of liquid stimulant. It's sure to send your body on a metabolic rollercoaster ride! Climb aboard, ladies!

Ok, enough of that. Time for something positive. Time for something UBER RAD!

I know that a lot of people see this nation as kind of 'behind the times'. I can attest personally that a lot of the fashion is well ahead of that in America (though much of it looks like 1996 puked on a city). What they do lack, however, is the basic understanding of what makes America cool. They know it's cool. That's good. But to assume that anything that sounds American, like American slang, or English words (in any arrangement) on a sign or shirt is American, is a complete fallacy. I will submit that it doesn't really matter, as long as it's cool here in Korea, but the problem lies with the fact that it is cool because it sounds American (or European...the spellings tend to be American). So here's a group that promotes the coolness of living in Korea. Excellent. It's in English. Even better. But the name of the organization is so patently lame that for it to actually be cool would be incidental to its name, or perhaps, an entire organization that lives every moment tongue in cheek! THAT is awesome. That, unfortunately, is also doubtful.

None of this, of course, can compare to what the good ol' Google Toolbar does to a page that is written in Korean. Now, Google does some great things. They have a fantastic email service, they are on the forefront of internet technology and they allow you to see photographic images of where people live, order 50 pizzas from somebody else's phone, and to case our military positions around the world. So it seems just logical to offer a translation service so I can read a foreign webpage. I have no idea what the ads originally said, but I cannot deny that the results of the Google Toolbar translation is absolutely fantastic. Observe.

What does ANY of that mean? The only ones that makes any sense at all are the 'fat thief' and the 'Substantial Gift Set', but unfortunately, the Fat Thief don't work. Also, I'm not paying 70,000 Double-Us for some seaweed and roasted mollusks. So not only is it poorly translated, but it's the lowest form of health faddish snake oil. Shame on you, Fat Thief. Shame on you. I'm never buying another one again.

So with that being said, just watch your back when cruising the net. The advertisement here may be highly enticing, with its pretty colors and fancy exotic women (which are nothing but regular domestic women here), but half of it is lies. Lies!
THAT being said, I have patronized Dunkin' Donuts several times while here, and I plan on doing a full-length expose on Mr. Pizza in the near future. What choice do I have? I'm here for five more months!

Word.

Back to Short Articles