Stephane
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Heralding cultural diversity - a stronger and more sustainable Korean wave:Summary
- Understanding wave dynamics – learning from nature
- Defining waves: always bear in mind that waves are disturbances
- Defining Hallyu: a simple wave, a current, or a vast ocean?
- Revealing a vast ocean in movement? Easier than carving every day the perfect wave
- Respecting cultural diversity – at home and abroad
- This is not a competition, this is not a “Clash of Cultures”
- Think nurturing beyond preserving: don’t build seawalls, grow mangroves!
- Diversity is the key to sustainability, ‘consistent’ doesn’t mean ‘constant’
- Nurturing an ethical, open, and fair ecosystem – showcasing cultural leadership
- Free creative forces across the nation and beyond, liberate time and space
- Economic leaders must act as true cultural leaders, open up and embrace change
- Most exposed at the crest of the wave, ‘cultural sectors’ must lead as role models
© Stephane MOT - August 2013
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II) Respecting cultural diversity – at home and abroad
Culture is about identity and community, codes and symbols that are not just meant to be preserved but ‘cultivated’, experienced, transmitted, assimilated, enriched and shared among humans.
A true cultural leader doesn’t destroy nature and its rivals. A true cultural leader is respected because he’s respectful of the whole ecosystem, of all cultures and all stakeholders. A true cultural leader respects cultural diversity at home and abroad, and he makes sure the ecosystem remains ethical, open, and fair.
a) This is not a competition, this is not a “Clash of Cultures”
Moments of contacts between cultures are not supposed to be conflictual. Let’s not transpose the so-called “Clash of Civilizations” imposture into a sterile “Clash of Cultures”, and let’s refer to nowadays intense “competition” in the media between regional or national cultures as a constructive “coopetition”.
This is not about being “the best”. Korean culture is already the best, at the same level as the American, French, or Dogon cultures. When one focuses on delivering the message that one’s the best, one misses the point, and only demonstrates a lack of confidence in their own culture. Being respectful is not a sign of weakness but a sign of confidence. To gain respect from other cultures, one must respect them as much as their own, on equal terms.
This is not about winning “market shares”, claiming new territories. What’s more important: Hangeul becoming the first alphabet to put the Cia-Cia language in written form, or Bau-Bau tribes joining the rest of the Indonesian community, as part of a nation that adopted the Latin alphabet decades ago?
Korea is typically acting as a cultural leader when it promotes young foreign talents along Korean ones for the ASYAAF (Asian Students and Young Artists Art Festival), or when it hosts a Korea-South Asia Culture Ministers meeting (September 6) and encourages international cooperation in Gwangju, site of the future Asia Culture Complex - to the condition of course that this relation doesn’t evolve into condescending patronization.
Likewise, multiculturalism is a chance for Korean culture. Everything must be made to favor the integration of migrants and the assimilation of mixed kids in the community, but not with the intention to replace one with the other, and always keeping in mind the potential of enriching both cultures with new dimensions.
Opposing different dimensions of culture, for instance tradition and modernity, also undermines the cultural continuum to which they belong. Korea often suffers from what I call the “Wonjo Syndrom”: the original is so much protected that all originality is lost. For example: some great masters are considered as national treasures because they perfected the art of hanji or pansori, and that’s very positive, but they are deterred from trying something new, and sometimes too much protected, as if to prevent contamination from modernism. Yet to the contrary, they have the power to disseminate, to transmit a priceless heritage, to enrich both tradition and modernity. Their role shouldn’t be restricted to maintaining traditions, but extended to inspiring creativity: typically, they should be, from time to time, invited to meet with young designers, who can invent something new from a shared DNA. Korea already proves that it can combine the national/international and tradition/modernity as a cultural leader when it sends young Korean designers to Laos to meet with traditional textile manufacturers who have an original know how, but are not familiar with modern design: each party learns from the other without losing their identities.
Cultural issues can become conflictual, but at different levels, for instance at the commercial level (‘cultural wars’) or at the political level, when ‘Northeast Project’ revisionists claim that parts of the Korean culture (Goguryeo, gimchi…) belong to China. But then, conflicts shouldn’t denature culture itself, and the defense and illustration of the Korean culture should always remain positive, never tainted by nationalism, which opposes people instead of bringing them closer together, and ultimately harms Korean culture.
b) Think nurturing beyond preserving: don’t build seawalls, grow mangroves!
All waves face some resistance and eventually withdraw, sometimes taking more than they give. The negative impacts of aggressive waves are not only measured in terms of public image: fragile ecosystems can be wiped out, and new defenses be erected to protect the shores from the next tsunami.
The short-sighted have the reflex to build seawalls, the wise ones plant mangroves:
- “Seawalls” are protectionist measures that will stop all waves, but also block evolution (e.g. banning contents from one nation). That’s “tin-can preservation”: you can keep food on a shelf for years, but when you open the can, the food has lost all freshness, and never tastes like the real thing. Preserving identity remains important, but building walls between cultures, or within cultures, as we saw earlier between tradition and modernity, amounts to choking each ecosystem. Korea already knows very well where isolationism leads: Emperor Gojong bitterly regretted his “Soegukjeongchaek” (쇄국정책) policy that precipitated the fall of the Joseon dynasty.
- “Mangroves” are natural defenses that also nurture the local ecosystem. They absorb the impact, and the ecosystem grows stronger, more resistant (because the protection comes from within, like an immune defense system), predictive of future changes.
If Korea’s screen quotas or France’s “exception culturelle” are perceived as protectionist seawalls by the US, they’re actually mangroves guaranteeing diversity and spurring creativity everywhere. Hollywood lobbies against such measures, but ultimately benefits from them as well: without them, ‘Tinseltown’ wouldn’t be able to adapt or remake as many already tested concepts, source as many new talents…, and improve its own capacity to address diverse markets at home or abroad.c) Diversity is the key to sustainability, ‘consistent’ doesn’t mean ‘constant’
NB: Regarding the most particular case of North Korea, South Korea smartly softened its ‘seawal’l: it used to block all image from the North but now, media decrypt the propaganda, South Koreans measure much better the gaps, and they are much better prepared to face any situation in the future. Now if the North could do the same…
Food is typically a cultural domain where Koreans excel at creating new experiences at home and abroad, from street food to fine fusion dining. And even to Nanta, where it becomes a universal language. Inviting foreign chefs to discover Korean food and to adapt it, like in the Seoul Gourmet initiative, shows a willingness to share and to evolve in an open world. If you erect seawalls, your shores can’t be the place where cultures meet, where innovation and creativity blooms. Like in Montparnasse heydays, when artists came from Spain (Picasso, Dali, Miro, Bunuel), USSR (Chagall, Soutine, Zadkine, Orloff), Italy (Modigliani), Romania (Brancusi, Tzara), the Netherlands (Kees van Dongen), the US (Ernest Hemingway, Louis Armstrong, William Faulkner, Man Ray, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound), Belgium (Django Reinhardt), Ireland (James Joyce), the UK (D.H. Lawrence), Japan (Foujita)… at the individual, national, and global level, culture progressed everywhere, including of course France (Matisse, Prevert, Cocteau, Poulenc…).
Korea has multiplied the occasions for foreign creators to come and meet, during festivals (e.g. PIFF) as well as for longer periods (e.g. artists in residence at the various Seoul Art Centers). Never have so many young and confirmed talents, Korean and non-Korean, roamed the country. Note that foreign students are another wonderful opportunity for Korean culture: within a decade their number grew from 3,000 to 100,000, many start their career or spend their most creative years in Korea, and all have the potential to remain ambassadors of Korean culture when they come back home or move to another country.
If creativity is infinite, our world is finite. All seas are connected, cross-fertilizing each other. They’re all part of a vast water cycle that sources and reaches everywhere. Just consider the epitome of Italian food, tomato pasta and expresso: tomato came from the Americas, noodles from Asia, coffee from the horn of Africa! Italians welcomed these ingredients to enrich their own culture, and to share with the rest of the World.
An exemplary nature is expected from Korea as it emerges as a cultural leader embracing diversity and welcoming other cultures. We can be ambitious and confident, but never arrogant, and always respectful – typically, are we respecting multicultural Koreans as well as we should? And as a general “global warming” for Korean contents raises sea levels everywhere, it minimizes the efforts needed to promote them, but also increases the necessity for Korea to act responsibly.
Like the wind for sea waves, media are the key factor for projecting to distant shores. Many nations are intensively promoting their culture and tourism, particularly across Asia (e.g. China, Japan, India, Korea, Malaysia…), and beyond classic advertising, they leverage pervasively on viral marketing innovations and social networks. But being ‘always on’ and consistent doesn’t mean being invariable and constant.
The capacity to sustain the effort in time and space is an advantage, but not a guarantee for sustainability: a seascape where all waves would always have the same amplitude and frequency would look not only fake, but also boring. People enjoy staying by the sea because it’s at the same time consistent and never quite the same, never fully predictable. Cyclical events of bigger amplitude help forge habits and nurture specific expectations, for instance when surfers anticipate the nth wave, or when tourists flock for events associated to high and low tides. Beyond that, each sea must have the power to surprise you sometimes. But if it surprises you all the time, only a minority of fans will keep coming. It can be useful to have a beach or two like that on your shores, but not all over your country if you aim at mass tourism.
Likewise, when all events and festivals enjoy the same level of hype and promotion, they all become non-events, and the noise breaks promising waves before they have time to grow. Proven successes and truly exceptional events need to be distinguished from the mass to help potential attendees take decisions. And in order to give a chance to every event, specific editorial lines must be developed for specific audiences.
An ocean cannot be carried by a single wave, even a popular one (and it shouldn’t, for the ecosystem’s sake). For instance, using K-pop stars to promote K-food might help K-pop fans get interested in K-food, but also make people who dislike K-pop despise K-food, if they happen to receive the message on mainstream media. Besides, Korean food has the potential to reach much further by itself, starting with food lovers who are generally not in the same demographics as K-pop fans.
Furthermore, audiences evolve. After years of TV domination, Hollywood managed to bounce back during the seventies thanks to blockbusters turning new generations into avid moviegoers. But the young Americans who came for E.T. or Star Wars grew up, and the industry had to design relatively more mature movies, sometimes coupling young stars with confirmed superstars, for instance Tom Cruise with Paul Newman or Dustin Hoffman (“The color of money”, “Rain Man”). Disco or Star Wars enjoyed another ‘mainstream’ period decades later but in between, only hardcore fans remained loyal all the way.
The Korean wave will grow much wider if it taps deeper into Korea’s rich and diverse cultural assets, not as one generic wave, but as thousands of messages of all shapes and sizes under a common umbrella, each one touching a relevant shore with the relevant impact. Exposure to the sun, the air, and new shores will also stimulate content creation in layers that didn’t have that chance previously, but may prove powerful.
Of course, the Great ‘Gangnam Style’ Tsunami of 2012 splashed across continents and demographics, and what started as a shallow parody made millions want to venture into deeper parts of Korean culture. But such ‘monster waves’ can never be repeated, and certainly not guaranteed on demand, when and where you need them. If PSY didn’t take the risk of going for something different, the risk he took was even greater: forcing direct comparisons at all levels with a phenomenon of unique proportions, that couldn’t be reproduced in a laboratory (let alone across the globe): ‘Gentleman’ did pass the 500 M views mark on YouTube – a remarkable success –, but also for a ‘mini-Gangnam Style’. Each new wave can strengthen the continuum if it is distinct from the previous ones, if it presents a different facet of the ocean.
A long but shallow horizontal wave is often less efficient than shorter but more focused slices that cut through deeper layers and target segments. “Verticals” can help specific audiences grow interest in Korean culture through relevant entry points. Beyond market verticals (e.g. teens, seniors, business travelers, honeymooners…) and content verticals (e.g. music, literature, movies, sports, food, tourism…), transversal themes are often used to pool all contents and options in order to better address specific needs, interests, or tastes (e.g. nature, adventure, party, culture and history, romance, health…).
Even when promoting one dimension of Korean culture, it is essential to display variations in rhythm, contents, to leverage all dimensions of that dimension... Again, this is a vast and diverse ocean in motion. And at the same time, you should always respect its identity, its soul. For instance, Korea shouldn’t been ashamed of its shamanic traditions, but accept them as highly valuable and differenciating assets, identity markers. Refusing diversity, showing only the polished and glamorous sides of a culture, that’s negating it and ultimately destroying it. An ocean without biodiversity is a dead ocean.
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