Globalization of South Korea

The blog Colors in South Korea contains information about South Korea to spread awareness about its cultures to people in the world that are unfamiliar with this country. A lot of people in America do not know where South Korea is located and they believe that Samsung, Kia, and Hyundai are all from Japan and China. It is not just for Americans but people in everywhere who may not know much about Korea. The purpose of this blog is to discuss the globalization of South Korea, and its goal is to spread its culture. This image is based on the blog’s aim to globalize South Korea, and it shows future of Korea in the City of New York, which is the most popular city in America and in the World.
The image that first gives messages that are linguistic are the Korean words on the musical advertisement and the brand Samsung. These messages can be broken down and gives a signified that of ‘Korean’. The linguistic messages in this image are both denotational (literal image) and connotational (symbolic).

We now have the pure images that provide some non coded messages. The noncoded iconic message is simply what we see on the image. In this image, there are brilliant and vivid colors of customs of performers that signifies ‘Hanbok’, a Korean traditional custom. We see people performing on the New York street in Korean custom and playing with instruments. The performers on the left play ‘Jang-goo’, a Korean traditional instrument and the ladies on right perform Korean fan dance. This idea is that we have a scene that represents the globalization of Korean culture in New York City. New York City has a significant impact on global commerce, finance, media, culture, art, and entertainment and it is the most popular city in America and in the world. It is also an important center for international affairs. Since New York is one of the cities that leads the world in every aspect, performing in the New York City streets is significantly worthy for globalization. A signified, which itself implies that the performing at the City of New York, is the globalization of South Korean culture.

The second sign’s signifiers are the advertizing of both the Korean star and the Korean musical in the middle of New York City. This also signifies the globalized culture of South Korea. When exploring the image, there are more signs. There are American brands like Kodak that are popular in America right next to the advertisements of Korea. This shows the idea that Korean brands and entertainments are closed to the world-class. Also, the brand Virgin is located in between the singer and the brand Samsung. This brand is a leading British braded venture capital organization and is one of the world’s most recognized and respected brands. Most popular and leading brands are displayed on the New York street. This shows that Korean brand has advanced in last several years to be on par with the world’s top makers. However, on this image, the brand Samsung is somewhat located at the bottom of building and it is not as big as other advertisements on the streets. Samsung is now well developed to be one of the top electrical brands in the world but it still has responsibility of advancing technology and thus helping the nation gain a competitive advantage in the world markets. There is also Time Square on the image which is the focal point for global commercial culture, which makes the setting New York more globalized city.

The coded iconic message is the sum of all the messages that are connoted by the image itself; the image expresses symbolic meaning. The performers with the traditional instruments and the ladies in traditional customs aligning in a line are harmonious. This gives a message of harmony that the Koreans have in mind. The repeated images of performers show the perception of harmonious life in Korean culture. From the time of King Sejong dynasty, Koreans had a traditional value that humans should be harmonious from each other and should also be harmonious with nature itself. This idea is contained in most of our cultural dances and performance in Korea.

Overall, the background image is very dark which emphasizes the advertisements and performers on the street. The advertisements are shown realistically because of the real photographic city image at night. The unrealistic image of performers shows the futurism of Korean culture at the New York City. The bright advertisements, harmonious performers and the night city work all together to convey the overall meaning of the image which is the globalization of South Korea.