'Korea communicator' on move
Rapper and singer Psy, left, and Choi Jung-wha, president of the Corea Image Communication Institute(CICI), hold up the Korea Image Stepping Stone Award in a pre-recorded meeting that was shown at a ceremony at the Grand Intercontinental Hotel in Seoul, Jan. 15. / Courtesy of CICI
Choi Jung-wha sees more work ahead on spreading culture
Choi Jung-wha, president of Corea Image Communication Institute.
By Kim Ji-soo
For nearly three decades, Choi Jung-wha has worked in the intense world of simultaneous interpretation in which a split second mistake can become the root of a long-lasting problem between people or even nations. She knows what gets lost in translation and how to save it.
Since 2003, she has focused this know-how on promoting Korea to the world via the Corea Image Communication Institute (CICI) and the Korea Image Award.
The year 2012 was gratifying with a coming-of-age for CICI, Korea and Korean entertainment, including “hallyu” or the Korean wave. CICI chose Psy and his song “Gangnam Style” for the 2013 Korea Image Stepping Stone Award. The world also embraced the 35-year-old rapper in 2012.
“It was like the Big Bang for promoting Korea,” said the 57-year-old said as she sat in her residence/research institute in Nonhyeon-dong, southern Seoul. CICI usually decides on the winners during the previous year, and then bestows the award in January the following year.
Recipients of the Korea Image Award and other dignitaries pose for a photo after the award ceremony in Seoul, Jan. 15. / Courtesy of CI
Choi and her husband, Didier Beltoise, in this 2006 file photo pose in “hanbok” or traditional Korea attire at the home of former President Yoon Bo-seon in Seoul. The two will be taking on the new task of promoting Korean culture through the 54 Club, a new project to develop Korean tourism.
“I saw perfection in Gangnam Style, the song is explosive, the editing immaculate, as was the information technology that made it possible,” she said, expanding on why she chose Psy for the award.
In person, Choi is full of vivacity and moves with pleasantness and ease of manner that belies the intense career she once prevailed in.She said her natural-born optimism and ability to translate ideas into action in three seconds has helped her in effectively deliver a message.
“It’s getting the nuance, the essence of the details down,” which she recognized in Psy’s song and video. “The video aside, Psy told me how he sang his heart or ‘jinsim’ out, because he was singing in the Korean language that many people didn’t understand. So he had to bare it all, and that came through,” Choi said.
This intoxicating cocktail of Korean zeal with cutting-edge information technology has been the key to letting the world acclimatize to contemporary Korea.
In terms of commitment and achievements, Choi is outstanding. Born the third youngest of four siblings in Seoul in 1955, she fell in love with the “beautiful melody” of French when she first heard it in an elevator at the age of 14. She didn’t know which language it was, so asked and then decided to pursue it. After graduating top of her class at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, she went onto ESIT School for Interpreters and Translators in France from September 1978 through June 1981, earning a Ph.D. Society was conservative and she wouldn’t have made it to Paris without her open-minded father.
“My mother was worried, but my father was encouraging,” she said. Working in the trade sector at that time, her father was more liberal than most; he would take her and her college friends to music festivals and treat them to beer when they came over to her house.
Studying at ESIT while Korea was still an unknown nation to many Westerners, Choi felt compelled to let her classmates know that she was from Korea. She also believed that there was so much to discover in Korea but content to share this was scarce. When a fellow student at ESIT told her there was a book on Korea in the school library, she rushed to only find it was only the complete works of the late former North Korean leader Kim Il-sung. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, promoting Korea was largely the domain of bureaucracy with its rigid promotional films or the domain of a few highly talented individuals.
After ESIT, she interpreted at some 1,900 international events and also for Korean andFrench Presidents includingformer Korean Presidents Chun Doo-hwan, Roh Tae-woo, Kim Young-sam and the late Kim Dae-jung and the late former French President Francois Mitterand.The French government awarded her its highest honor of Legion d’Honneur for her work. Following nearly three decades on the field, she set herself a new goal.
Exercising her facility for language and an ability to make people comfortable and laugh, she took to producing messages about Korea and Korean identity into her stride.
Despite skepticism about the continuity of a renaissance in all things Korean, Choi sees a decade or more of demand for things Korean and hallyu.
In addition to selecting people who most effectively promoted Korea over the previous year, the CICI also conducts a survey of foreign leaders in Korea asking what the strongest image of Korea is. When this question was first posed, Korea was most readily identified as the last divided country in the world. But the most recent survey shows respondents regarding Korea as synonymous with leading global companies such as Samsung and hallyu. It is an illustration of how Korea is now accepted as an entire package — history, product and content.
“What we need to do (now) is strike a balance between content and form, and to attempt new, creative things.”
With her French husband Didier Beltoise, head of the hospitality consulting firm Cs, she started the “54 Club,” a new project to develop Korean tourism products that focuses on enjoying food, landmarks, entertainment and stories.
Choi believes that dynamic and explosive cultural content should factor into the government’s future growth strategies. For example, she has formulized since 2001 new growth engines in information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and environmental and cultural technologies. In the incoming government of President-elect Park Geun-hye, there will be a new massive agency — the Ministry of Future Creativity and Science.
“Science and information technology should be the engine of growth, but investment in culture shouldn’t be cut. For example, the success of hallyu entertainers has the young generation all wanting to become entertainers. But we also need scientists and researchers. So why not host a festival for scientists or survival auditions for scientists,” she suggested.
However, having lived and traveled in diverse locations for work, Choi sees a need for Koreans to reconsider their social values and objectives.
“In France, a definition of a middle class person may well be whether they can speak a foreign language, they have traveled widely and are well versed in one sport or a musical instrument. The definition of a member of the Korean middle class is whether they own a 99.9 square-meter large apartment, a 2000-cc car and how many times a year they travel abroad. Koreans measure things competitively, in numbers and rank and how many possessions each person has,” Choi said.
The optimist in her, however, believes that the smallest steps can be made to upgrade such Korean perspectives and the world will demand more from Korean identity in the next decade.