Frog-in-the-Well Branding

By H. Seung Cho

Let's do a little arithmetic. From 33rd to 15th place by 2013, that's 18 places in four years, five places a year, and nearly half a place per month to reach the target set by President Lee Myung-Bak and his Presidential Council on Nation Branding more than a month ago.

Armed with the 10-point action plan and fuelled by the Lee administration's trademark drive and ambition, Korea should have nearly caught up with the Czech Republic and Egypt, a place ahead of us jointly on the Anholt-Fgk Roper Nation Brands Index (NBI). Yet, one cannot help but worry that this laudable initiative could fizzle out due to our nation's frog-in-the-well thinking.

It is, nonetheless, a genuine delight to see that President Lee understands the increasing value of non-material factors in contemporary international relations, as not only ``hard,'' but ``soft,'' and now ``smart'' power seem to be the must-have items for the international political season of 2009. It's this new realization that prompted President Lee and his council to announce the blitz ``makeover'' 10-point action plan.

The simplicity of it, mostly a list of how to spread what we already have, such as taekwondo, the Korean language and volunteers, however, makes one wonder why we haven't started this all already. As Euh Yoon-dae, chairman of the Presidential Council of National Brand, expressed, the problem was ``simply'' that the value of Korea was ``not fully realized in the world.'' A simple problem requires a simple solution, apparently.

Yet, one need be prudent and nuanced when navigating the unknown terrains of ``national brand'' promotion. Take the survey, conducted jointly by the council and World Research, for instance. The results show that our strong points are our long history and rich culture (23 percent), and traditional cuisine (18 percent), while our weak point, by far, is the security tension with our recalcitrant neighbor, North Korea (48.4 percent).

But does it not confound that India, ranking more than five places above us, is also a neighbor of an authoritarian nuclear state? What about China, where Confucianism originated, also possessing an undeniably long history and rich culture?

In other words, how do taekwondo and the Fulbright-benchmarked ``Global Korea Scholarship'' fare when put next to, say, Japan's well-established JET English Teaching program or China's successfully adapted chicken chow mein in a take-out box? These questions allude to an understanding of the basic concepts of economic theory that President Lee and his team should know very well ― product differentiation and the nature of competition.

Simon Anholt, a British government advisor who collaborated with GfK Custom Research North America and came up with the NBI, seemed to hit the nail on the head when he expressed (``Brand Korea Plan Called too Ambitious,'' March 20) that the government should ``sharpen its strategy'' to distinguish itself from all other countries that do similar things. Consider our national pride, football star Park Ji-sung, recently crowned figure-skating darling Kim Yuna, or technology giant Samsung. How many of us have seriously asked how many non-British players are in the Man U squad barring Park? What were the nationalities of record-breaking figure skaters prior to Kim Yuna? Or how many products are in any given household, and how many of them are not Samsung?

The competition at the supermarket of brands is also far from stale, as it shows that we sit on a shelf between brand champions China and Japan, as well as being in the same aisle with the newly revamped ASEAN states. It's clearly not enough to know that our products have absolute value, because it's comparative value that matters.

Insensitive to both competition and the need to differentiate, it's no wonder the 1.5 million travel-hungry gap students skillfully skirt past Korea annually. Repeating the situation in the 19th century when discovery and trade routes jumped straight from the South China Sea to the shores of Japan, we risk reviving the old branding of the ``the hermit state'' ― not quite the ``respected Korea'' President Lee has in mind.

It is therefore paramount that we become a little cold-headed and critically evaluate our global comparative worth as well as have a better idea of who we are selling what to.

For a starter, the survey and its results, based on 1,000 expatriates in Korea, are far from sufficient as indicators of our worth. It should strike one as more than peculiar that the survey asks someone why he or she might not be here. Conducting the same survey in England, for example, people would have difficultly even conceptualizing Korean cuisine, asking ``is it anything like Chinese or Japanese?''

Furthermore, we need to establish who our target market is in order to understand both the nature of competition and brand differentiation. Are we to capitalize on the ``hallyu'' population, lure in the skillfully skirting backpacker students or are we talking first-class-flying businessmen? Without answers to these questions, we're simply throwing up whatever we have for grabs, turning this initiative into a last minute garage sale.

Thus, while the initiative is praiseworthy, challenging the anachronistic conception of an economic-military state, we must first take a look outside the well and realize that if Korea has something to offer, other countries will most likely also. Failing this, Korea is in danger of falling back into the well.

The writer lives in Seoul. He has lived in England for 18 years, finishing his undergraduate and masters degree at the London School of Economics. He has also served as the book review editor for the Millennium Journal of International Studies, and can be reached at h.seung.cho@gmail.com.