NK Damages South Korea’s Global Image

As awareness of Korea spreads around the world with the country's growing importance, so too do negative perceptions.

By Michael Breen
Contributing Writer

As awareness of Korea spreads around the world with the country's growing importance, so too do negative perceptions.

When asked why, it's very easy for both expatriates and Koreans to get over-zealous. After the 2002 World Cup some leading figures were gathered in a national image committee under the Prime Minister's office.

Instead of figuring broad strategic matters, their first meeting dived straight into the mire of minor tactics. There was discussion, for example, of how to order restaurants to stop using toilet rolls as napkins. I similarly recall one expatriate discussion on improving Korea's PR be distracted by cheese, specifically its availability and excessive price.

Just as it is important to avoid irrelevant complaints and the urge to correct public behavior as if citizens were naughty schoolboys, so we must resist whining about what can't be changed.

One of my pet peeves is that Korea's political leaders don't communicate well. They can be helped by speechwriters and communications specialists, but the fact remains that articulate discourse plays a small role in political persuasion here.

People do not express themselves clearly. In fact, those who do are often viewed with suspicion. How many times have we seen a powerful figure clear his throat noisily in the microphone and go ``erm" and ``uh" as if consciously dumbing down to make himself appear more trustworthy? That won't change until the education system does.

There are many ugly things about Korea, from the apartment blocks that wreck the countryside to bullying in schools. But the exercise of national branding does not require us to clean up everything with the sole motive of improving out image.

The problem arises when the negative associations outweigh the good. Think of a country which has a good brand like, say, France, and you will find plenty of ugly things. But, what actually comes to mind? Yes, wine, good food, beautiful countryside and topless beaches.

How can we perform the same magic trick with Korea?

The positive, of course, cannot be forced. It must be naturally pointed out and it must be there and be real in the first place to be pointed out. Branding is a nudging exercise, nudging people to focus on a few good things over the bad.

Having said that, if there's a real overriding issue in your country, and you can't distract attention from it, the key issue then becomes your response to it.

Rather than guess at all this, we need to start by looking at what people say about Korea. Surveys show that the best known fact about Korea is that there are two of them.

The ball and chain for South Korea is its association with the other one. North Korea may well be the bottom of the pile in terms of national image.

This is bad news for the nice people in North Korea. But their country only makes the news when their atrocious leadership behaves badly. It is a failed state, run by people whose noteworthy skill is their willingness to be uncompromisingly ruthless in the suppression of any challenge to their power.

Many folk in far off lands who we would like to think well of us get North and South Korea mixed up, mainly, I'm sure, because in English they both call themselves ``Korea." Their Korean names are distinct. We might think their ignorance is unimportant, but we're trying to attract tourists and investors and both make decisions based on false impressions.

More knowledgeable investors and visitors who do know the difference between the Koreas also consider the two far more connected than we residents do. We know the plan here is to do whatever we can to avoid unification, but the world seems to think that it is bound to happen sooner or later.

When you live in Seoul, you can completely ignore North Korea and be confident of going to Jeju for a holiday or investing in a local start-up without preparing a sudden exit strategy.

But when outsiders think of visiting or investing, North Korea looms along with labor unions and anti-foreign ``public sentiment," as a potential threat. And, let's ask, which group is the more ignorant?

Let me put that question another way: What is the likelihood of warfare, and how many will die violently, before this is all over?

This overriding perception of South Korea as being surgically connected to its psychotic brother cannot be denied, at least not without a constitutional change. The South Korean Constitution considers the entire peninsula to be our territory and requires the government to seek re-unification with the rebel-held sector to the north, although fortunately it doesn't stop us from putting this off for 100 years.

Given that reality, we have to work with the association of North Korea.

As simplistic as it sounds, South Korea must clearly demonstrate with words and action that it is different from North Korea. I'm not suggesting a brand slogan of ``Not North Korea."

Rather, South Korea should more actively seek to demonstrate that it is worlds apart in terms of values and lifestyle. The President, as the country's brand manager, must without diluting the serious security elements of the issue, position the country as safe, confident, reasonable, democratic and open for business, rather than assume the world knows it is.

Michael Breen can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.

BOX: The Korean War and the DMZ
Another way to roll with the punch of North Korea is to turn the Korean War and the DMZ into a major tourist attraction. I do not mean to suggest leveraging war and division for good PR. That would be too cynical a remembrance for its victims.

But there does seem these days a desire to move away from the war and even forget it. This tendency, I believe, comes from the victim mentality, the sense that the war happened to them.

But Koreans, I suggest, should not run for cover from their modern history. To do so is unseemly, especially given the culture of reverence for ancestors.

A country's attitude to its history says more about it than the history itself. Koreans, for example, fall under more foreign disdain for trying to sweep history away or blame foreigners than for what actually happened in the past.

Of course, the DMZ is already a tourist attraction, but more could be done. Visitors can look into North Korea from various DMZ Observation Posts in Gyeonggi and Gangwon provinces, but it can be a chore going to the places where they sell passes.

The Korean War should be better remembered. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans, Chinese and international soldiers died in the war.

That awful loss in recent memory calls for more resources to be put behind large scale and dignified remembrance, as befitting a democratic country that values the lives and rights of the individual (as opposed to the way dictators used to ram the war down our throats to justify their rule).

Consider the battlegrounds in present day South Korea which have particular associations for other countries, as well as for Koreans and Chinese: The Incheon Landing (US Marines), The Imjin River (British and Belgians), Chipyong-ri (Americans, and French), White Horse Mountain (South Koreans), Yongmunsan (South Koreans), Naktong River (Americans), Gapyong (Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders). As these are remembered and the fallen honored, so Koreans are admired in return for making that international sacrifice worthwhile.

Who Is Michael Breen?

Michael Breen is a public relations consultant and author. He has worked in Korea for 25 years. A former correspondent for The Washington Times and The Guardian newspapers, he was the president of the Seoul Foreign Correspondents Club for three years.

Since entering public relations in 1999, he has been engaged in a number of large projects in Korea, including the World Cup in 2002, and promotional programs for Seoul City, Incheon International Airport and the Korea Exchange, as well as for numerous multinationals.

He is currently the chairman of Insight Communications, a public relations firm.

He is the author of The Koreans (1999) and Kim Jong-il: North Korea's Dear Leader (2004). He was made an honorary citizen of Seoul in 2001.

He has a regular Friday column in the Korea Times and periodically writes for other publications.