If you are a Korean or a Korean-American living in the United States, you will be perplexed by two contradictory phenomena concerning the image of Korea in today's American society. One is the enormous popularity of the numerous electronics made in Korea and the other is the unusual scarcity of Korean restaurants in American towns.
Just by visiting any Circuit City or Best Buy store, for example, one will immediately find Samsung or LG PDP/LCD television sets proudly occupying the entrance, attracting everyone's attention. Because of their superb quality, these products are often significantly more expensive than their Japanese competitors, not to mention less known American brands.
Visiting local mobile stores run by major mobile phone companies also shows the immense popularity of Korean electronics in the United States. Phones made by Samsung and LG are virtually dominating the American mobile phone market through major companies like Verizon Wireless and Cingular, leaving big-time companies like Motorola and Nokia behind.
So many people carry around Korean-made cell phones on the streets of America today that it's easy to spot them. Who would have imagined this situation a few decades ago, when Japanese electronics enchanted fastidious American consumers and thus monopolized the American market?
Few Americans, however, seem to know that such state-of-the-art electronics are the products of Korea. In this age of postmodern, multinational enterprises, nearly all imagined consumer merchandise, including American brand products, are manufactured in various Asian countries where labor is inexpensive.
Therefore it has become practically meaningless to put the manufacturing country of a product on a label; only the brand itself matters. This may be the reason why few Americans associate Samsung or LG with South Korea; they think of them as American products manufactured in Asia.
While Korean electronics are predominant in the modern American market, there are surprisingly few Korean restaurants in American cities where Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Vietnamese and Thai restaurants are thriving. For example, in downtown Berkeley, one can find all sorts of ethnic restaurants, from Chinese to Persian, and more; only Korean restaurants seem to be missing. The East Coast is no exception. Last week, I took Judge Don Chae from Dallas, Texas, to a food court in downtown Boston. There, we were able to find all sorts of ethnic restaurants except Korean.
Westerners today are very much interested in diet and health food. If so, what could be better than Korean cuisine? Korean culinary art is well known for focusing on health food as well as a variety of vegetable dishes, and we can surely fascinate Westerners with traditional Korean dishes such as bibimbap.
In this age of discovering ethnic cultures and when dining at ethnic restaurants has become fashionable, only Koreans haven't taken advantage of such a golden opportunity to let foreigners experience and appreciate Korean food and culture.
Michael Alexander, an American columnist who once lived in Korea recently wrote me, lamenting such a deplorable situation. "Korean food needs to be popular internationally. If Korean traditional culture such as food became internationally popular like Chinese food, it will greatly help Korea's economy".
He continued: "South Korea needs to market its culture to the world. The Korean Wave is only in Asia and it is only a trend".
To some of us who have delusions of grandeur that Korea is the center of the world or already well known to the world, Alexander urges us to open our eyes to reality: "I am very disappointed because in the world, people have a very bad image of South Korea. Either the image is bad, or they do not even know about South Korea at all. People are not aware of Korean culture as well".
Then he suggests a solution: "If the South Korean government would have a campaign on marketing Korean culture to the world, especially in Europe and both North and South America, the economy of South Korea would benefit even more".
Unfortunately, however, our Ministry of Culture and Tourism's immediate concern seems to be on how to sponsor domestic cultural events, rather than on how to promote Korean culture overseas. Our myopic politicians, too, are busy scavenging domestic political gain and slandering each other in an ideological war.
Meanwhile, we are losing the precious opportunity to let the world know about Korean culture. If we do not wake up, South Korea will remain an invisible, forgotten country even in this age of ethnic and cultural diversity.
Kim Seong-kon is a professor of English at Seoul National University and visiting scholar at Harvard University. - Ed.
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