Tourism, Culture & Society

Have tourism been a culprit in commodifying tradition and culture of Korea?

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My answer is yes. This is because of the fact that so many aspects of Korea tradition and culture are turned into commercialised products that make money for them. With temple stay programmes in the Buddhist temple how can I still say that tourism is not a culprit for commodifying tradition and culture in Korea?

However, if you were to see things in the other point of view, because of the commercialisation of tradition and culture product of Korea, more people are able to learn about Korean Buddhism, how to make Kimchi, how to wear a Hanbok and etc. It gives tradition and culture a value to for the locals to conserve and sustain them. Since majority of the Koreans believes in Confucianism, up until today, the traditions passed down from the older generations to be practiced during festivals and events are still being practiced at Korea today. They feel that it is their duty and an obligation to practice them and treat them as part of their life. As such, even though some form of tradition and culture were commercialised, but they also helps to promote Korea’s tradition and culture and earn them money at the same time.

With such form of benefits, commodification of tradition and culture of Korea may not be a bad thing since the loss or dilution of tradition and culture is not much of a problem right now.

Changes brought by Tourism

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With Tourism, there would be multiple positive and negative changes that will be brought to the country.

Positive
The main positive changes or impact brought by Tourism to Korea would be the economic benefits. With more and more people visiting the country, it is undoubted that more tourism receipts will be generated. It will be sure that the standard of living of the people at Korea would rise.

With tourism, it brings people all around the world together. When they get together, there will be a chance for people from different culture background to communicate and understand each other’s culture better. As such, it creates mutual understanding between each other through the cultural exchange. Therefore it will reduce prejudice and racism towards Korea. With tourism, foreigners will be able to learn more about Korean Buddhism and appreciate it.

With tourism, job opportunities are created all over Korea be it working for a hotel, a guide, or a housewife that teaches visitor how to make Kimchi. All sorts of jobs are created and as such, problem of unemployment is reduced. With the various events and festivals, the community would be strengthened as the local community feel proud of their culture and thus creating a special bond within themselves.

Because of the sales revenue that the traditional culture would bring to Korea, it will result in more effort used on preservation of their traditional culture. As such, interest in conserving and sustaining the culture and heritage product of Korea would increase. Thus, it will prevent the loss of their traditional culture and their way of life back in the past.

Will all the theme park, Water Park, golf courses and other tourism developed facilities; it will benefit the locals and host community as well. This is because the facilities are opened to everyone as long as they have the ability to pay. As such, locals could enjoy whatever world class resort or theme park that the country has in place for tourism.

Negative
With tourists arriving to learn more about the Korean culture, it is definite that dilution of culture will appear as the tourist bring along their values and beliefs of the own cultural background to Korea to share with the locals. For example, the temple stay programme that was offered to visitors to understand more about Korean Buddhism may cause the dilution of the authenticity of Korean Buddhism. Temples were located at secluded places because it is away from civilisation and hence it would be less crowded. This is such that a more conducive environment will be available to the followers of Korean Buddhism to be able to learn the teachings of Buddhism in a peaceful surrounding away from civilisation and technology which are deemed to be distractions. If many tourists were to be visiting the temples, the tranquillity would be disturbed and it would not be as peaceful as before. To meet the demands of tourist, comfortable accommodation might even be developed and who knows what will happen next.

Natural landscape and destination are being transformed into tourist destination like what happened to Namiseom Island where Winter Sonata is being filmed at are being used for themed travelling but do travellers know what and why the Island is called the Namiseom Island and will the locals forget about it because of the over focusing on the much more profitable themed travel on the island?

Spot the "Disney" in Korea

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Disneyization
Disneyization is portrayed as a globalising force whereby the principles of Disney theme parks are spreading across the world. The dimensions of Disneyization include theming, hybrid consumption, merchandising, and performative labour.

Themed Travel in Korea
Theming has definitely been present in Korea right now because of the themed travel that was offered from Korea. An obvious example would be TV drama themed tours. Such tours are conducted whereby the filming location of the drama or even movies would be promoted as a tourist destination because of the popularity of Korean drama to the world. Visitors will experience what the actors have experience at the filming location. Examples of such destination site would be Namiseom Island where the winter scene of the Snow Falling of Winter Sonata is being filmed at and the First Shop of Coffee Prince located at Hongdae.

Obvious evidence that Disneyization had taken place in Korea would be their world renowned resort, Everland Resort. The resort includes a theme park and since it is a theme park, restaurant, shops and rides at the destination itself would definitely be very similar to a Disney theme park. It is said that it is so similar that many people would compare Everland to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

Hybrid Consumption
Hybrid Consumption suggests that it is a general trend whereby the forms of consumption associated with different institutional spheres become interlocked with each other and increasingly difficult to distinguish.

Looking back to Everland Resort, according to their website, it suggests that Everland Resort comprises of Everland- one of the four major theme parks in the world, Carribean Bay- world-class water park, Home Bridge- a nature themed lodging facility, Glen Ross Golf Club- a public golf course, Hoam Art Museum and Transportation Museum. With all the amenities of the resort and the accommodation that they have at Everland Resort, it is clear that Hybrid Consumption is present as a combination of forms of consumption are made available to visitors of Everland Resort e.g. eating, shopping, visiting the museum, theme park, water park, etc. With all the amenities present, it became hard to distinguish whether Everland Resort’s primary product is the theme park, the golf course, the museums or the water park.

Merchandising
Merchandising can be in different forms like themed travellers buying goods and products related to the Korean drama from the filming location or as simple as buying the traditional costume of Korea, the Hanbok. All these things are able to tell others at one go that they are bought from Korea just like how Disney sell their merchandises with the Mickey Mouse sign on them. Other products maybe accessories that are worn along with the Hanbok by females called the Norigae, Kimchi, the fermented sauces, ginseng and many more.

Performative Labour
Performative labour suggests that there would be a growing tendency for frontline service work to be viewed as a performance, especially one in which the deliberate display of a certain mood is seen as part of the labour involved in service work.

This could be talking about how workers from a theme park would behave like. In order to give a world-class theme park a standard level of service, service providers are trained to be very friendly and helpful at all times. Try to imagine yourself trying to smile for 8hours a day every time you go to work. As such, it is obvious that sometimes the mood being expressed by the service provider may not be what they really felt but what they needed to do to make sure that visitors would enjoy their experience over at the destination. So this would be one of the examples of performative labour in Korea with regards to Everland the theme park.

What is South Korea known for?

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Korean Pop Music

South Korea is currently known around the world for its pop culture that is affecting fan boys and fan girls all around the world known as the Hallyu or the Korean Wave. Because of the good looks of the idol, choreography of the dance for different songs, and the catchy beat of Korean pop music, it caused attention of a lot of people all around the world apart from Korea itself. Famous boy band like the Super Junior that will be holding their concert in Singapore at December 2010 have their 5000 seat concert sold out within a day and have fans queuing over night just to see their performance. Buyers include foreigners like Korean, Philippines, and Malaysian that came especially to Singapore to purchase the concert ticket. Korean pop music will appear to top in music charts of other countries like America and Japan as well.

Korean Drama

Korean drama gained its popularity over the past few years gaining attention not only from the teenagers but also the middle-aged person as well, especially for women. The interesting plot of the drama and along with the good-looking celebrities make the show worth to watch and some fans even go crazy over the drama series. Some famous drama even has their filming location turned into a tourist attraction because of its popularity. Examples of some Korean Drama would be Boys over Flowers, The First Shop of Coffee Prince, Winter Sonata and more.

E-sports

Apart from sports itself, South Korea is also well known for their population that are indulged in gaming to the extent of playing a computer as a full-time job and competitions being held at convention centres and broadcasted live on television channel in Korea and live streams over the internet. Among all the games that are available in the market, a real time strategy game called Starcraft is exceptionally popular in Korea. Because of the games nature to strategise and test the ability of the player to multi-task and react according to the opponent’s strategy, the game had caught the attention of many Koreans and gamers from all over the world. The game is so popular that the players will be paid to play the game as a full-time job over 10hours a day and players would compete in competition with attractive prizes e.g. the champion of the Sony Ericsson STARCRAFT II Open Season3 will earn himself 100,000,000 KRW, which is USD 85,700. GomTV is one of the official broadcasters of Starcraft with Incheon Tourism Organization is also one of the sponsors of the event.

Leisure Programmes

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Festivals

Seol-nal

Rich in culture and with their long history, Koreans celebrate various types of festivals. Because of the different religious group present in Korea, festivals are celebrated according to both their lunar calendar and the western calendar depending on the origin of the festival.

One of the examples of festivals celebrated according to the lunar calendar would be the Seol-nal or the Lunar New Year which will take place around February and last for three days. This festivals is considered to be the one of the most important festivals throughout the whole year to Koreans. Families will gather and spend time together playing family games, paying respects to elderly. They will dress up in their Hanbok and also eat a soup made with oval rice cakes called the “which is believed that one will grow one year older after eating it. Foreign visitors do not be surprised if you are unable to find any restaurants and provision open for business during these 3 days.

Chuseok

Another one of the four main festivals that are celebrated in Korean is Chuseok, which is the Thanksgiving Day in Korea. It is the time where families member from different places gather together to share their experiences and food as well as to give thanks to their ancestor for the harvest they get for the year. Koreans will hold their ancestor memorial services to honour their ancestor and freshly harvested rice will be used for the service. They would go to the graves of their ancestor to remove weed and to offer their respect. It is considered to be a duty and a form of devotion when practicing this custom. This relates back to the teachings of Confucius mentioned in the post of Korean culture. Korean wrestling and circle dance are part of the activities that will happen during the Chuseok holidays and traditionally the head of the family will buy everyone living in the house, which includes the servants, new Hanbok.

Sports

Soccer

Football or soccer is currently the most popular sports that are spectator by the South Koreans. They have their own football team called the Korea Republic national football team and have their own football league known as the Korean Professional Football League (K-League). Because of their passion for this sports, they were proud to have co-hosted the FIFA World Cup 2002 with Japan and also achieved many success by getting through the preliminaries of the FIFA World Cup multiple times and also currently ranked 39 in the FIFA/ Coca-Cola World Ranking. Professional football player and captain of South Korea’s national football team, Park Ji Sung is also a football player of Manchester United Football Club in Europe.

Taekwondo

Taekwondo a national sports of Korea, which originated from another form of Korean martial arts known as the Taekkyon. With its increasing popularity among sports lover, it is easy to find a Taekwondo coach that speaks English. Taekwondo is also one of the sports in the Olympic Games. Taekwondo is considered to be a great form of exercise as in involves kicking, jabbing and the limberness of the learner. As a form of martial arts, it is also considered as a form of self defence. Learner of Taekwondo will not only benefit themselves physically but mentally as well, as they vigorous training would often require a tougher determination over the physical abilities of a person and the repeated etiquettes teachings passed down from the coach to the learner will turn the student into a more mature person.

Their Mode of Education

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South Korea's educational path consists of six years of primary school, followed by three years of middle school and then high school. After which would be university studies. The primary curriculum consists of nine primary subjects which are moral education, Korean language, social studies, mathematics, science, physical education, music, fine arts and practical arts. English language is also introduced because of the language becoming the commonly spoken language around the world.

In South Korea, education is considered to be very important by many families and parents would want their children to get into college. Because of this, South Korean is really seriousat studying and would spend most of their time on studies.

Their Language

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The Korean Language
Koreans are one ethnic family that are able to communicate with each other with the Korean Language. The Korean Language is spoken by more than 65million people in Korea and 5.5million Koreans living in other countries. Because of the fact that Koreans speak and write the same language, they have a strong national identity. In modern Korea, dialects are spoken as well but they are about the same as the standard Korean Language and as such, speakers or listeners do not encounter with trouble understanding one another.

Hangul

Hangul is the Korean alphabet that was created to write out the Korean Language. It is made up of 14 consonants and 10 vowels. Koreans are proud to have invented their own series of syllables that will combine to form a word and they even have a day whereby they celebrate the creation of Hangul on October 9 in South Korea which is known as the Hangul Proclamation Day.

Traditions

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Traditional Clothing

Hanbok is the traditional clothing of Korea. It is commonly seen in Korean Dramas nowadays and currently it is worn during special occasions such as festive occasions and special anniversaries. Examples of festive occasion and special anniversaries would be children’s first birthday, 60^th birthday, funeral or religious related services. However in certain places of Korea, such as Chunghak-dong on Mount Jirisan where traditional way of living is still being practiced, people still wear Hanbok as their casual clothing.

There are many types of Hanbok and they are worn by different type of people or for different type of purposes. Depending on the type of Hanbok worn, one may be able to determine the social status, gender and age group of the person wearing the particular type of Hanbok. Hanbok is worn with different headgears and accessories.

Traditional Cuisine

Traditional cuisine of Korea or Korean food is known as Hansik. With the Korean wave affecting places all around the world, more and more people are able to find Korean restaurants around different places of the world. As such, more and more people are being exposed to how Hansik are and how they taste like. However, there is still much room more improvement on making Hansik more popular when you compare food travel of Korea with other countries like China and Japan where many people can immediately give you the names of their local food if you were to ask them.

Korean cuisine is made up of two main components which is fermentation and vegetable. Fermentation is the breakdown of food into more digestible component through natural bacteria found in the natural environment around.

Fermentation is the process whereby the nature of the food changes into other form which is useful and beneficial and not the process whereby food gets spoilt. An example of such fermented cuisine in Korea would be their Kimchi or fermented spicy cabbage. The process of fermentation gives Kimchi its rich taste and Koreans would say that the Kimchi have ripe if the Kimchi are well-aged and ready for consumption. The term ripe is used for fruits but the Koreans use them to express the stage of their fermented cuisine. Other form of fermented food would be sauces that are used in much Korean food and is known to be the basic of Korean food. “Jang” is what Korean calls their sauces. Some of such sauces are soybean sauces, red pepper paste, and soybean paste. It is said that these fermented food and sauces are high in nutritional value and they are what you taste in Korean cuisine.

A typical Korean meal is made up of steamed rice, a soup and a variety of side dishes to go along with the meal. The side dishes are made primarily with vegetable in the past in a commoner’s family. It is rare and uncommon to find a side dish with meat in it. The side dishes could be boiled, fried or simply seasoned with salt.

Traditional Music

Traditional music of Korea is separated into two different categories. The first type of traditional music is called the Jeongak, which is traditional music or classical music that are played to the royals and upper class in the past while the second type is called the Minsogak or the Sogak, which is traditional music or folk music, which is the music of the commoners.

The Jeongak are sang by skilled vocalist during ceremonies or ritual services for the royalties and upper class people while Minsogak can be sang by anyone and it is common for people to sing while they work on their fields. Therefore, the Korean folk music Minsogak are more commonly sang by Koreans as compared to the classical music, Jeongak.

Traditional Houses

Traditional houses that Korean used to live in are called Hanok. The term includes are sort of traditional Korean architecture which includes thatched-roof, shingle-roof and tiled-roof houses. Most of the thatched-roof and shingle-roof houses have disappeared but the tiled-roof can still be found in Korea right now and some of the structure were considered to be heritage site and is being maintained by the government. Up till today, there are still people living in such houses as their home.

Houses are made to be cool in the summer and warm in the winter season because of the houses being built without the floor touching the ground. The unique temperature control system of the houses are called the “Ondol” and using it in different ways will bring about different effects, being warming the house or keeping the house cool.

Culture

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Hospitality of Koreans

South Korea, also known as the Eastern Land of Courtesy because of its location at the Eastern Asia, is known for their friendliness and hospitality towards other people. It is sometimes considered to be lucky for one to have a Korean friend because of how hospitable they are and how attentive they are towards their friends.

Leppert (1996) stated that they do not forge friendships instantly upon first meeting. Koreans take friendship seriously and they feel obligated towards their friends (p.71). As such, once a friendship is forged, it will be a long-lasting one. When you become a friend of theirs and start to be recognised as a person that will be “in” their life, which is when a Korean will be really kind towards a person.

Reciprocity in Korea

In South Korea, people practices reciprocity, especially the businessmen. Reciprocity means reciprocation or mutual exchange. It can be in form of presents, treats or favour. For example, when people do a favour for them, the Koreans will feel that they are in debt of you and they would reciprocate by giving you a form of advantage or privilege as a corresponding response to your favour. This is related to Confucianism and the ethics of reciprocity in Korea.

No men are equal & Confucianism

In South Korea, there is a form of “hierarchy system” in which people behaves and act towards each other. For example, the word brother is not found in the Korean language. Only elder brother (“hyeong”) or younger brother (“dongsaeng”) can be found. They address each other with initials that depend on the working position of the person or age of the person. A subordinate will address his or her manager as Manager Lee instead of Mr Lee because of his position in the hierarchy of the working environment. A younger male would address an elder male along with his status, “hyeong” instead of his name itself. This is considered as a form of respect.

The origination of such behaviour is due to the fact that South Korea is a Confucian society. This means that they practice the ethics of Confucianism. Teachings of Confucianism are actually ethics and philosophies that originated from a Chinese called Confucius. From the Teachings of Confucius, a system of ethics was practiced, which stress the obligations of human relationship between one another.

Confucianism stresses several elements for example like integrity, filial piety, respect for age and seniority, and sincerity.

Background Information of South Korea

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Introduction

South Korea, one of the countries with the fastest economic growth over the past few decades is currently one of the many countries that are highly noticeable by many foreigners because of their success over a variety of things: e.g. technology, agricultural, pop culture, e-sports and many more.

Facts

South Korea is located at Eastern Asia, southern half of the Korean Peninsula bordering the East Sea and the Yellow Sea.

The capital of South Korea is Seoul.

Ethnic Make-up: homogeneous (except for about 20,000 Chinese)

Religions: no affiliation 46%, Christian 26%, Buddhist 26%, Confucianist 1%, other 1%