Blogs

Facts:

• South Korean labels were the big winners in FT Confidential Research's latest survey of China's most popular cosmetics brands, as they catch up on the dominant US and European companies.
• Their popularity is strongest among young consumers, supported by the fashion for Korean pop music and television. We expect global market leaders to continue to tap into this trend with more acquisitions in the Korean cosmetics industry.
• Online cosmetics sales look set to continue to grow faster than the overall market and established brands will increasingly focus on this sales channel to drive revenues.

Beauty is now one of the country’s largest industries, rivaling technology, and is a major export area. In the past five years alone, exports have grown from $1 billion in 2012 to $2.64 billion in 2017, a record high, according to the Korea Customs Service.

South Korea’s leading brand Amore Pacific has joined the top ten biggest beauty companies at number seven and, despite its demographic decline, the country is now ranked among the top ten global beauty markets, with a market size of $13 billion, according to Mintel.

We have the South Korean people to thank for creating conditions for a market where competition is ferocious. The country’s deep-rooted belief in personal cultivation is twinned with a skin-first, fast-fashion approach to beauty.

“There is a fundamental belief, anchored in a philosophy of well-being, pervasive in all of Asia, that you should take care of yourself spiritually and physically as a show of respect to yourself and others, and to your family,” Ms. Wang explains.

This cultural milieu, magnified through the social media panopticon of the most highly-connected society in the world where internet speeds are faster than any other, provides perfect tinder-like conditions for new trends to spread like wildfire.

In recent years, US's top cosmetics store, Sephora, has brought in a new K-beauty section. An increasing number of beauty brands were introduced, and soon attracted popularity in North American buyers.

The rise of KPOP Culture

The South Korean music industry is a 5-billion-dollar industry because the music culture is taken incredibly seriously. Before idols are put into groups and debut, they must make it through training camp that could last 1-10 years depend on their performance. Aspiring artists audition at the major entertainment agencies such as YG Entertainment, JYP Entertainment or SM Entertainment, and if one has a successful audition, one becomes a trainee at the respective agency. Being a trainee does not guarantee becoming an idol, trainees must work hard on their vocals, choreography, acting, language skills and appearance in order to debut in a group. Since the competition is extremely fierce, trainees are expected to work until perfection, which stems from a generally principled and result-driven society.

The result of these intense training camps is world-class vocals, style, visuals, and choreography. In order to grow globally,  idols record albums in more than one language in order to attract a larger audience. EXO sings in Korean, Mandarin and Japanese, this has allowed them to be one of the biggest K-pop groups in the world. A lot of pop songs includes a lot of English phrases, and raps are sometimes composed completely in English. Although BTS songs do not have the English version, they get so popular that their fans are willing to use subtitles to understand the lyrics.

I attached the BTS performance in the Billboards Music Awards 2018.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LnEhbdAMcI

Reflect upon what you have learned about the culture(s) you have been studying.

    This semester, I focused on learning about the cultural similarities and differences between that of South Korea to that of the U.S. Some of the topics that I explored are the symbols and different educational levels of both countries. This was very fascinating to explore because I know what these topics are for the U.S., but I was unaware of what the equivalent were in South Korea. Overall, it was nice to discover these cultural ideas and it will be great to continue learning about these themes in SDLC 113 next semester!

1. Picture:
   
   Artifact #4 (Angella Lee)
   
   
   
2. Context:
   
   I worked on one of my writing goals by having a conversation with my friend in Korean. This picture is a snippet of our full conversation, but we were talking about making plans to meet up sometime!
   
   Before I practiced my writing skills in Korea last semester, I was very hesitant to type/text in Korean. However, the writing class that I took at Yonsei University allowed me to feel more confident in writing in Korean, so I will continue to practice writing in the future!

I went out to a traditional Korean restaurant with other native speakers, I also order my own food in Korean.

IMG_5187.JPG.jpeg

Topic: A day of an exchange student in Seoul

Goal: Learn everyday communication in different settings.

This semester:

• Pronunciation ( vowels and consonants)
• Introduction
• Basic questions in the classroom
• Describe things in the classroom
• Common Verb

Cultural topics

• Cultural dimensions  China & Korea

An exchange student in Seoul

MORNING / LUNCH / CAFE  (phrases and vocabulary）

Bibliography

Video Sources:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMdnQOzF4pU&t=6s
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcWWYdjePHE&t=6s
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfcoBHG4V4Q

Webpage Sources:

1. http://www.hjenglish.com/new/p1121048/
2. https://geerthofstede.com/culture-geert-hofstede-gert-jan-hofstede/6d-model-of-national-culture/
3. https://www.hanchao.com/contents/basic_info_detail.html?id=9751

    In a previous cultural post, I talked about the cultural symbols that symbolize South Korea and the U.S to compare and contrast them. However, I purposely left out the symbol of the animal because it has a more complicated story that deals with an old myth, which I will explain now.

    The myth that I am talking about is the tiger versus the bear story, which we learned about recently. This story begins with Hwan-In, a god, and his son, Hwan-Woong. Later in the story, there is a tiger and bear who desperately wants to become a human. Therefore, they seek advice from Hwan-In, who tells them that they can become a human if they eat garlic and mugwarts for 100 days in a dark cave. During this 100 day journey, the tiger could not do it anymore and gave up, while the bear endured and successfully completed the mission! As a result, the bear was turned into a female human and lived happily ever with Hwan-Woong.

    Through this story, it would make sense that the national animal would be a bear because it was the one that was patient and did persevered. However, the complication is that some individuals adamantly believe that a tiger would be a better animal because it is more fierce and a better representation for their country.

    This was very cool to learn because based on the story, the national animal should clearly be the bear, but I can see why they would chose the tiger instead. Nevertheless, this was definitely an interesting topic to learn about and it will be nice to learn about more myths in the future, next semester!

    One of my Interpersonal Communication goals is that I want to be able to understand what each line of the national anthem of South Korea means. My learning partner and I went over the chorus and each of the 4 verses to learn that the overall themes looked at the strength and power of the nation of South Korea. For example, the first line of verse 3 is roughly translated to mean “forever and no hindrances,” which is referring to the overall strength of South Korea as a nation.

    In the previous cultural post, I talked about the national tree and flower of South Korea versus that of the U.S. I was able to apply what I learned about those symbols by recognizing them in the national anthem. For instance, the national flower, the “moo-goong-hwa” aka Hibiscus syriacus, is present in the chorus of South Korea’s national anthem. The national tree, the “so-namu” aka the pine tree, is also present in the national anthem in the first line of the second verse.

    It was interesting to apply what I previously learned to what I am learning now!

In Week 11, our language partner showed us a popular Korean movie, Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds. We watched the movie with subtitles but also was able to practice our listening skills throughout. I was surprised to find out that I was actually able to understand some of the phrases spoken by the characters. The action fantasy movie talked about the death of an ordinary fireman and three grim reapers who acted as his public defender in afterlife. The fireman was assigned 7 trials to complete in 49 days to find out how he lived his live and therefore where he ought to spend the rest of eternity. It was a very heart-warming movie with an interesting plot. I love Korean movies!

Week 12: Thanksgiving Break

During week 9, we learned about the different major holidays in Korea. One of which is the Lunar New Year, I was surprised to find the similarities and differences between practices in China and Korea. Koreans have an emphasis on kneeling on the ground to elders to pay respect while wearing formal hanbok, although Chinese also perform similar rituals, they seem less strict and less formal. Holidays are special ways to learn insight about Korean culture because it shows topics of formality and special cuisines eaten during these holidays.

In Week 10, we learned about the numbering system in Korea. There are two types of systems, used for difference purposes of communication. The first is Sino-Korean, or China System, it has words that sound very similar to Chinese numbers, and they are used for saying money, time in minutes, phone numbers, measurements, etc. The other is the Korea system, which is more modern and complex. It is used for time in hours, age, and counting.

Beginning of the seventh week, we started by recapping the complex vowels and consonants. And then we moved on to learning how to order food in Korean restaurants, this includes asking questions such as “what food do you recommend,” “How much is it?” But we also learned how to compliment the food, showing respect, etc. Ended the class with watching a foreigner visiting Korean street food in Myeongdong, introduced different kinds of street food. This week we visited a Korean restaurant inside New Grand Mart with our language partner to practice ordering food with Korean sentences we learned last class. I was able to communicate with the waitress. I ordered TangBok Bap, which is the sweet-sour pork with fried rice on the side.

By the fifth week, we are trying to learn more vocabularies. We started off by learning how to count numbers. There are two different systems of counting numbers in Korean, depending on different occasions, and it is often difficult for foreigners to immediately tell when to use which. We also learned the days of the week, basic emotions, and basic introductory sentences. I have found the vocabularies very hard to retain, I will just have to repeat it over and over before I remember them. On the sixth week, the learning partner gave us a short quiz on Korean vocabulary, she gave us the phonetic translation in English and we would write it down in Korean. We moved on to learning complex vowels and consonants, some sounds such as “w” is not in the Korean consonants, so instead, they use a combination of “u” and “a” to form the “w” sound.

Continued learning the Korean alphabet in the third week using games and boards and textbooks. Watched an episode in a Korean talk show with English subtitles. The episode introduced many people across the world that have learned Korean, there were Russian, Indonesian, Chinese, etc. The episode also went into depth about their experience and interaction with Korean, what was easy and difficult for them to understand. The most insightful thing was that the episode talked about phonetic similarities and differences between their native language and Korean. By the fourth week, we had done learning the Korean alphabet and started using the consonants and vowels to form real, meaningful characters. This was very satisfying to actually be writing and reading Korean characters after only four weeks of study.

The first week of Korean class, we focused on setting up different goals we want to achieve that is both realistic and attainable. We came up with a list of 10 goals that formed my learning plan, but we also discussed long-term goals, what we want to do with Korean in the future. Also developed a sense of Korean culture, from contemporary to traditional. The second week, we began to learn the alphabet. Evelyn said that reading and writing are the easiest to learn in Korean because the phonetic formations of a character is very easy once you learn the Korean alphabet. We learned the alphabet by playing some games and writing them down repeatedly.

These are the food I had in Korea. 

Bulgogi，Bulgoki（불고기）

Samgyeopsal Roast pork

Naengmyeon（냉면）Korean-style cold noodles

Dak galbi（춘천닭갈비）spicy chicken

김치전 (Kim chi jeon) kimchi pie

설렁탕 (Seol leong tang) beef soup

마늘족발 garlic pig feet 

말차 케이크 Matcha cake

Recently I have been listening to a song called "SOLO" by a Korean singer Jennie in a KPOP group called " Blackpink". I really like the concept and the design of the music video. In order to understand the song, I studied the lyrics and try to sing along with it.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b73BI9eUkjM

Here is a conversation I had with my mentor's friend in Korea.

The conversation is I said I major in Economics,

oh great, is that interesting?

It is hard, especially the exams.

Okay, fighting! Being a student is the best.

What is your career?

I am a school teacher.

This is a clothing store I went to in Seoul. It is called "nerdy" which expresses an attitude of breaking out the stereotype. I really love the store design. They make it looks like a bedroom and hide clothes in the wardrobe. The graphics t-shirts are also very cute so I ended up buying some.

I%20am%20Claire%20not%20Clare%20%202018-11-11%2016.25.55.mp4

    This week, my learning partner and other SDLC students went to New Grand Mart to practice speaking and ordering in Korean! Although I did have a lot of practice ordering food when I was in South Korea last semester, I was given the opportunity to practice again. 

     It was refreshing because I remember how I would sometimes struggle to order my meals in Korean last semester. The problem was not talking in Korean to order because I knew how to say the words, but I was often shy to actually say those words because I was afraid that I might mess up. However, I can definitely tell that I am a lot more confident now, after a whole semester of practicing in South Korea!

    I am also able to practice ordering in Korean when my family and I eat meals at Korean restaurants. My family tries to help me practice by purposely telling me to order and ask for things. For example, I would attempt to order my meal in Korean and ask the waiter/waitress for additional napkins and water, when needed. The best way to practice my Korean is in the real world, so this was a great experience!

     Here’s to continuing practicing ordering in Korean in the future :)

BTS, which is an abbreviation for BangTan Sonyeondan, is the most popular K-POP boy group worldwide. There are seven members in the group, which include Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, and Jungkook. They debuted in 2013 with the album “2 Cool 4 Skool”, and continued to release an album almost every year since. They slowly gained popularity until their big hit in 2015, with the song “I Need U”. Ever since then, their popularity skyrocketed and all of their songs became big hits, and they had the highest selling albums. They were recognized worldwide, and they even received BillBoard awards for the Top Social Artist for 2 years in a row, and were invited to perform at the American Music Awards, and have collaborated with top U.S. artists, such as Nicki Minaj, Steve Aoki, Wale, and Charlie Puth. What is very admirable is that they mainly sing and rap in Korean- and although they mainly perform in Korean, they have many international fans, and always send out a message of “Love Yourself” which was their album title and RM’s speech at the UN. Not only are they recognized for their songs and their performances, they are also recognized for the messages they send in their songs.