Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Two days of late start rudely interrupted by a 9am Wednesday. I shouldn’t be complaining. This is school, not vacation.
We headed to the fancy part of town today, that’s right Gangnam. Yep, like the song. There are many neighborhoods in Seoul and Gangnam is the most elite, the most expensive, and has the most name brand recognition.
The morning began with a stop into the FleishmanHillard PR office. They showed us around and shared their views on the importance of PR in Korea and why brands here are starting to turn towards a full PR agency, as opposed to an ad agency or media agency. They walked us through a really interesting crisis case they are working on, and it is being handled in a similar way I think a PR firm would approach it in the states. They say one of their guiding principles is to “do what’s right” which is important for a field where the general public tends to view us as “fixers” or “spinners”.
After spending the morning there with the CEO and other executives, we made our way through the neighborhood to lunch. I have to be honest, I am starting to miss American food, I guess the McDonald’s the other day helped a bit, but not really. My food-home-sickness went away during lunch at School Food with my kimchi bokkeum-bahp. It wasn’t too spicy, the egg was done perfectly, it wasn’t too hot or cold for the day. Once again, happy tummy.
A big theme of this trip seems to be shopping. Surprise, we had more free time to shop today. The stores in Gangnam were more western than in other neighborhoods. There were lots of brands I recognized, even saw my first Apple store in Korea. Samsung really owns the market over here. Shopping by my dorm is pretty affordable. Over here wasn’t as much, no real surprise there. My project is all about the representation of culture in local advertising, so I tend to take this time to look at the ads I would otherwise avoid back home.
Gangnam is, apparently, THE place to go for plastic surgery in this part of Asia. In fact, many folks from a China will come here to have work done. And this isn’t the same plastic surgery as back home where maybe you get some Botox here or there or smooth out a wrinkle, get a nose job. You can certainly get those things here (in fact I saw about 4 girls walking around with bandages on their faces leading me to believe they had gotten nose jobs) but they also do “full facial reconstruction” including, but not limited to, reshaping your jawline. Beauty is taken to crazy extremes here. I know it’s “important” back home, but glad that our society has a much wider lens to determine what beauty is.
After wandering through the “plastic” district, we stopped at another cultural high point: the SM Town Museum. It’s all about K-pop bands and their successes. It hasn’t seemed to be updated this year because BTS (the only k-pop band I really know) wasn’t featured in it. The museum was attached to a mall with a really cool meet up spot. It was part library, part book store. Had I known a while back that this would be a stop on our trip, perhaps it would have been less of a struggle to find a certain comic book.
The mall is also conveniently located right by the Gangnam style statue. I guess when it was built, Psy, the musician who wrote the song, wasn’t happy that the statue would exist. The song is supposed to be making fun of the lifestyle of Gangnam and the statue doesn’t help his intended message. Regardless, it was still a fun picture to take.
Once we got back to our part of town, I joined a few girls at a nail place and got the worst manicure of my life, but it looks fine from a distance haha. Similar to home, I couldn’t really understand the woman working on my nails. Unlike home, everyone but myself and the two girls I went with, could. I think there were a few jokes made at our expense, highlighted when the girl working on my nails said something and the whole salon was filled with giggles. The other two went with gel, but the removal process of that freaks me out. Theirs turned out nice. Mine is fine for the equivalent to $12 USD I paid. It was an experience.
Later that night a group of us met up for dinner and drinks. Nothing classier than honey fried chicken out of a cup and a nice glass of white wine. There is a “food court” of sorts near me with a bunch of permanent food stalls. If I went to school here for real, I would likely be over there a few times a month. So much chicken for so little money. I’m going to have some sticker shock going home where eating out is not nearly as affordable.
It’s a good thing it got cold while we were out. It made it harder for us to justify exploring more and easier to talk ourselves into working on our projects. This is still a class, not truly a vacation haha.