Market Me, Daddy

Oh, I like this. The Korea Times has another column by Tom Coyner (left), this one titled "Korean Slogans Comical To Foreigners." The piece is actually less coherent than that -- he mentions marketing slogans like "Hi Seoul" and "Korea Sparkling" in a couple of sentences, but mostly Mr. Coyner rambles all over the place, bitching about the renegotiation of the beef-import agreement with the US:

Furthermore, as zany an impression the irrational anti-mad cow disease demonstrations may have made on foreign executives earlier this year, what probably was more significant was President Lee having to order his subordinates to return to Washington to renegotiate the terms and conditions of the U.S. beef imports resumption agreement.

More than many Koreans may realize, Korea suffers an image problem when it comes to contractual compliance. To be fair, this is one aspect of how Koreans conduct business amongst themselves.

Yet in a global economy, while one needs to act locally, one also needs to think globally when it comes to the basics of business. And that includes the validity and reliability of consummated contracts.

When President Lee sent his representatives back to Washington to renegotiate the beef import agreement, many foreign business managers recalled unpleasant memories and stories about misadventures in doing business in Korea.

After all, if the word of the Korean head of state cannot be trusted, what may one expect in working out a deal with a Korean company's CEO?

Given this, Korea needs more effective national branding. ...

"Branding" is one of the buzzwords in marketing circles these days. (Naomi Klein's No Logo has a good account of what it means and how it works; I've mentioned here before how the US has tried to "brand" itself -- if you're dropping bombs on people, torturing them, throwing their society into chaos, and the saucy wogs have the cheek to get upset about it, the remedy is to hire a PR expert to sell them a New Image of America ... In fact, it's not a remedy at all, but I'm sure the PR experts get paid bountifully anyway, and throwing money at the private sector is what America is all about.) From his babbling in this article about "Kotler's Four P's of marketing" -- and holy moly, "Back in 1981, Al Ries and Jack Trout came out with a fifth P, Positioning"! but what about the sixth P, Progress in the Positioning of Pointless Promotional Pandering? -- I'm inclined to suspect that Mr. Coyner was hitting the Jack Daniels while looking at the marketing texts on his office bookshelves.

On the sanctity of consummated contracts, it should be remembered that the Free Trade Agreement between the US and South Korea which included beef imports had not been ratified at the time of the protests (still hasn't, as far as I know), so the "contract" was not "consummated" and there was no reason it shouldn't have been renogotiated under public pressure. Plus, of course, the US, like every other country, breaks contracts and agreements all the time. A relevant example here (though there are many others) might be the agreement Bill Clinton made back in the 1990s, offering to help North Korea build special nuclear reactors for the production of electricity if the North would dismantle its existing reactors that could (perhaps) be used to make weapons; the US reneged on every point, and then had the chutzpah to attack Kim Jong-Il for breaking the agreement several years later when he restarted his old nuclear program. The whole function of contract law is to govern the renegotiation or cancellation of "consummated contracts."

But here's my favorite bit. Why, Mr. Coyner asks, do Korean bureaucrats deploy these comical marketing slogans?

Korean bureaucrats are not stupid. They are highly educated and often spend money on international marketing companies.

The problem seems to be that the tried and generally true approaches by these PR and marketing companies are mangled in the bureaucracies, often at inception. ...

Instead, and too often, cheap short-cuts are implemented that rarely, if at all, adequately survey what foreigners perceive Korea to be and what messages may positively impact on foreigners.

Mr. Coyner himself, says his bio at the foot of the column, "has worked in both HR and high tech sales & marketing in Korea, Japan and the United States. Soft Landing Consulting focuses on improving sales results of primarily foreign firms in Korea and Japan." So there you have it: give Tom Coyner more money, O Korean bureaucrats. Don't pinch those won! This (like other KT columns by foreigners I've seen) is actually an infomercial for the writer's company. What a cushy gig; I wish I could get one like it.

Victory

The protests in Korea continued yesterday, even under heavy rain. (Photos from OhMyNews.)

I wish I could link to individual articles at the Korea Herald website. Here’s an important bit from “Lee’s Trouble Deepens, Undermining Mandate”:

But the tide began to turn in mid-May as the wave of protests against the beef trade deal escalated in Seoul and major cities. Embarrassingly, the bulk of demonstrators were teenagers who share concerns on the internet on the safety of their school meal. …

The first thing Lee and aides did in the face of the protest was to try to uncover the "leftist forces that were pulling the strings."

Coming next were violent crackdowns highlighted by video clips showing police shooting water cannons directly at protesters and kicking a grounded woman in the head. …

Fresh from his China trip last week, he ordered his aides to investigate who bought the candles used in the rallies and who financed and maneuvered the demonstrations. His remarks changed the antibeef campaign into a anti-government movement. …

His government is in for more trouble in the politically sensitive month of June.

Local by-elections are scheduled for tomorrow. June 10 marks the 21st year of a 1997 democratic uprising. June 13 marks the 6-year anniversary of the tragic deaths of two girls crushed by a U.S. military vehicle - which prompted a wave of anti-American protests before last presidential election.

Labor unions are also set to intensify struggles against his planned reforms of the blotted public sector.

The streets may turn into a battlefield of ideology later in the month as anti-communists may recall two deadly naval clashes between the two Koreas in June of 1998 and 2001.

With that knee-jerk anti-leftism, it’s no surprise that George Bush likes Lee.

But here’s the thing: the protesters won – this round, anyway. From “Beef Imports Shelved Among Public Uproar”:

The government again postponed the resumption of U.S. beef imports yesterday, bowing to growing pressure from all sides - including the ruling party.

The new import terms were scheduled to come into effect today as soon as the government published them in its gazette.

The Agriculture Ministry said it asked for the plan to be on hold at the request of the ruling Grand National Party. Public Administration Minister Won Sei-hoon ordered a halt in the binding of the government publication, officials said.

Lee has had to back down on other grandiose plans, like building a canal across the peninsula. “The plan was Lee's key campaign pledge but it faced opposition from civic groups and the majority of citizens for its possible damage to the environment and unproven economic feasibility. … He said all the preparatory events may be canceled.” But it would have allowed Lee to funnel so much money to private contractors!

Another headline: “Police Under Fire for Violence Against Beef Demonstrators.” Here’s a link to pictures at OhMyNews, and here are some of the video clips that the article refers to. (Props to Siegfried's Blog for these images.)

Compared to state violence in other places, or in South Korea itself under the dictatorships, this is fairly mild stuff. But it came as a salutary shock to Koreans after twenty years of democracy. What it makes clear, given President Lee’s immediate move to try to track down the Reds who were “manipulating” the protests, is that he’d like to go back to the bad old days – as long as he’s the new boss, same as the old boss.

Beef imports are only one of the problems South Koreans face, but now they know – especially the kids too young to remember the days when tear gas and water cannons and beatings with clubs and shields were routine -- that the government has to listen to them. A new generation of pro-democracy activists has cut its teeth in Korea, and rebuffed their government's attempt to slap them down and send them home.

For now, today, there’s good news: the people won.

The Land of Morning Anger

More on the Korean beef protests, which continue. The Western news sites I’ve checked, mainly the BBC and CNN, mention President Lee’s conciliatory statement about the controversy. The BBC says, “Last week, Mr Lee issued a public apology, saying he had failed to appreciate the depth of public fear.” But it doesn’t mention what two of my Korean friends confirmed independently, that Lee’s first public reaction had been derisive, telling Koreans that if they were afraid to, they shouldn’t eat the meat. President Lee, I’m told, was a corporate CEO before he became Mayor of Seoul and then President of South Korea, and he views citizens as employees.

The BBC’s pictures of the protests are also much less inflammatory than those at OhMyNews (the source of the the photo above). This link keeps adding more pictures, so even if you’ve already looked at it, you might want to check it again. You don’t have to be able to read the accompanying Korean text – I can’t – but the pictures speak for themselves. (The bottom picture, by the way, is of a policeman who was hurt in the struggle, but injured protesters outnumber injured cops 2 to 1. Lenin's Tomb has some relevant remarks from another context.) I showed this page last night to one of my Korean friends, who can read the text, and he was furious. He’s old enough to remember the dictatorship and the popular movement that overturned it. Water cannons and cops beating people are a blast from a past that most Koreans hoped was long gone.

So, with his poll numbers plunging and the opposition parties considering joining the protests officially, what does President Lee plan to do? The Korea Herald reports today:

President Lee Myung-bak will replace some Cabinet ministers and presidential secretaries possibly this week as part of efforts to ease the escalating public anger over the resumption of U.S. beef imports, ruling camp officials said yesterday.

"The president is taking the current situation seriously," said a presidential aide. "He is doing his utmost to figure out what the fundamental problems are. He will then put forward the answers."

An official from the ruling Grand National Party said there is the possibility of four or five Cabinet members and presidential secretaries being replaced.

Among them said to be most likely dismissed are Agriculture Minister Chung Woon-chun, Health and Welfare Minister Kim Soung-yee and Education Minister Kim Doh-yeon.

The reshuffle is expected to be included in a set of measures Lee plans to announce to win back the hearts of angry citizens who have turned their backs on his administration over the decision to resume U.S. beef imports.

Unfortunately, I can’t link to individual stories at the Korea Herald, which is why I’m quoting this one at some length. Lee's response sounds like typical damage control. I doubt, though, that throwing a few ministers and secretaries to the jaws of the new Zeitgeist will help President Lee: Koreans know his responsibility for these moves too well.

One editorial in today’s Herald, “A Fresh Start?”, says,

President Lee offered a public apology, holding himself solely responsible for all the mistakes his administration had made about U.S. beef imports. By doing so, he apparently wanted to shield himself from pressure to dismiss his agriculture minister and the other officials who conducted the negotiations with the United States.

Not many options are available to Lee now that what started as a protest against the importation of unhealthful beef is threatening to become an antigovernment campaign. The Lee administration has been considering presidential amnesty for protesters convicted of misdemeanors as a way out of the predicament. But that would prove to be too little to turn the tide.

The other editorial, “Street Politics,” scolds the opposition parties for “joining civic groups holding outdoor protests to demand renegotiations on U.S. beef imports and the dismissal of all Cabinet members.”

By doing so, however, the opposition parties are abandoning representation - a form of democracy where elected officials speak for members of their constituencies in the legislature. If they wanted to pursue their goals outside of the legislature, albeit temporarily, why did they stand in the parliamentary elections to control the legislature or to increase their influence on the decision-making process in the Assembly? …

The opposition parties will do well to discontinue street politics immediately and start talks on the operation of the new legislature soon. Otherwise, they will simply be seen to be inciting those disgruntled about the negotiations on U.S. beef imports for their own political gain.

Don’t you just love the blind passive voice? “They will simply be seen …” Seen by whom? Of course, exploiting the ruling party’s screw-ups for political gain is as hallowed a part of politics as “dialogue and compromise.” President Lee is also trying to use the tactics of image and perception that are standard operating procedure in the US: If the public opposes a policy, tell them they misunderstand it; try to change the government's image instead of its policies, which are sacrosanct.

The kind of pro-corporate “free trade” policies Lee has pursued so willingly are rarely enacted democratically. At best, they’re worked out in backroom negotiations and sprung as a fait accompli on the public. It is Lee’s government that, like most today (including my own), needs some lessons in representative democracy, and it appears that it will get them.

In Another Country

I hadn’t planned to write about Korea while I was here, but things got interesting, and I haven’t seen anything about this on the sites I frequent. Korea means a lot to me for both personal and political reasons that are too intertwined to disentangle briefly here. I admire its passage from dictatorship to democracy, a story of which most Americans know nothing. A lot of Americans I talk to have trouble grasping that South Korea was also ruled by dictators for over thirty years, and some flatly refuse to believe it. “Where’d you get that propaganda?” one asked me irritably.

Even before I got here a week ago, I knew that a Free Trade Agreement was being negotiated between South Korea and the US, and that beef imports had been a major obstacle. After a scare in 2003, Korea had refused to allow beef from animals more than 20 months old, because it’s at greater risk for Mad Cow Disease. But then, abruptly, new President Lee Myeong Bak (derisively known as 2MB, or 2 Megabytes) caved in and gave Bush what he wanted.

Lee had won in a landslide over previous President Roh, and he was hailed in US media as much friendlier to America than his predecessor, which translates as more open to neoliberal programs and multinational corporations. Roh had if anything been too US-friendly, but Bush never liked him, probably in part because of Roh’s background as a human rights lawyer. Much of Korea’s public capital has already been sold off since the 1997 financial crisis, but as always the corporations want more, and President Lee is eager to let them have it.

Protests against US beef imports began with an online petition calling for Lee’s impeachment, signed by a million netizens on May 4. Candlelight vigils started by high school students have been going on nightly. Such vigils have been used often in the past few years, over grievances ranging from US soldiers who ran over two schoolgirls in 2002 to the government’s handling of a Korean hostage killed by Islamists in Iraq in 2004. This time the vigils have persisted for weeks, developing a carnival atmosphere as popular singers like Lee Seung Hwan have come to perform and express their support. Lee told the crowds, “In fact I’m very selfish. I’m here because I’m worried about my family, my friends, and my neighbors. I think you’re all selfish here. But if everybody shares this selfishness, it will do good for everybody, don’t you think?” (Damn, I've lost the clip with Lee in it; the singer in the clip below is Yoon Do Yeon, who explained that he'd been silent too long and thanked the young people for goading him into action.)

But the vigils have also become an irritant, and police have begun to push the protesters, who’ve pushed back. Yesterday the conservative English-language Korea Herald ran a stern editorial, accusing the protestors of breaking the law, inconveniencing the country, and picking on the police. A Korean friend told me that President Roh restrained the police in their dealings with protesters, but Lee will let them crack down. This is worrisome. Not only old Korean hardliners but US commercial interests and government have long wanted the Korean government to ‘do something’ about what they call anti-Americanism. (As usual, this translates as any criticism of American policies and conduct.) The editors accused the protesters of starting fights with the police, and ordered Koreans to shut up and stay home.

Last night about 50,000 protesters gathered in front of Seoul City Hall (the BBC says 20,000), then proceeded to the Blue House, the President’s mansion. Police arrested about 70 (update: 228). There are already plenty of cell-phone videos online from last night. Everyone has a cell phone, so everything is caught on video by the crowd and uploaded to the Web. The police are frustrated, which in the long run will be dangerous. But for now, they’re under surveillance as they never have been before. One newspaper said that the police are still in the 20^th century, while the protesters are in the 21^st.

At about 12:45 a.m. the police turned water cannons on the crowd, injuring about 65. (Welcome back to the 20^th century.) This morning there are photos on OhMyNews showing police beating a demonstrator, but they were taken in daylight. My Korean isn't up to sorting out exactly when they were taken.

My own guess is that Mad Cow Disease, while a valid concern, is partly a symbolic tag for much larger ones. As in many countries, small farmers have suffered in Korea, leading to loss of farms and large numbers of suicides. Increased beef imports will only worsen their condition. The 1997 crisis gave the International Monetary Fund entrée to Korea; unemployment remains high, and inequality between rich and poor have grown steadily. The dictatorship was toppled in 1987 by a broad coalition ranging from the usual college students, labor unions and churches to middle-class citizens; the latter bowed out of activism when they won their immediate goal, no doubt believing that no more needed to be done. Now, with the economy still staggering, they may be returning to the struggle.

These events are part of the same global struggle that put Chavez, Morales, and Da Silva into office in Latin America. I imagine anti-“globalization” activists are already watching Korea, but what’s going on here deserves wider attention and support.

(Thanks to Soo for translations and help finding the video.)