Irony at its best kicked me in the ass this evening. On Friday I gave my students an essay question that asks whether or not advertising tells a lot about a country. Most of them were having problems writing the essay. In fact, I tried to think of Korean adverts that summed up Korea. The only adjectives I could think of were cutesy, foolish and stupid. Sure that’s one part of Korean culture but not a larger part of it.
But tonight while walking around Seomyeon, I realized I was looking at the question the wrong way. Advertising in Korea consists of a man walking around in a suit, scattering business cards on the sidewalk. This is what they call advertising!
In the rest of the world we call this littering! I couldn’t believe it. Now I wouldn’t say I ever deemed Seomyeon a clean place to stroll around, but I never actually saw someone throwing business cards deliberately on the ground. And it wasn’t just a few cards, he had stacks in his hands and he was scattering them around like a farmer feeding chickens.
This infuriates me. Not only are there no garbage cans to be found anywhere in the downtown, there’s some moron tossing paper everywhere. I bet you he won’t be the one to pick them up. I can probably count how many people on one hand who would actually pick up a business card off the dirty ground and read it.
I tried to take his picture but he scurried away while I was trying to focus and zero in on him. You can see his black pants and shoes in the photo.