Before understanding as to how treating a nation as a brand, it is worthwhile to look at some definitions of what is meant by a „brand‟ and “nation”. A brand is a given name, a specific symbol with the combination of design that allows people to automatically recognizes or identifies the „product‟ ,may it be goods or service offered by a particular organization , nation or a company. From knowing the brand itself, consumers are able to differentiate the “product” from its other competitors that
may offered the similar service or goods. A slightly richer of what a brand is given by Macrae, Parkinson and Sheerman, positively stated that a brand basically represents a “unique combination of characteristics and added values, both functional and non- functional, which have taken on a relevant meaning that is inextricably linked to the brand, awareness of which might be conscious or intuitive.”(Keith Dinnie, 2008, p- 14).
Moore At.al (2008) said on his research of brand , that it is present to bring the knowledge and privileged of giving “choices” to the public ,giving them a full- right to know which brand offers what, thus along the way builds brand loyalty.
Automatically, branding gives the owner a legal statement of ownership and a trade mark (Crainer 1985), where other competitors extremely has no boundaries to cross over and offer the same exact services nor goods to the public.
Many might still wonder around the bush to find the perfect answer as to why, brand is a vital component to stand out from the rest. According to the Social identity theory, one‟s identity actually contained two parts. First, the personal identity and second, was the social identity. Both have similar objectives, which is to have own personal identity, making public able to distinguish correctly right away. Definitely consumers more likely to buy brands with names they recognized, as they have already put trust over the products or services offered which relates the main topic to this study as to why South-Korea launches Global Hansik Campaign purely with the intentions and objectives was to create sturdy and stronger identity to penetrate the
targets of Worldwide audience especially with the mission to penetrate consumers outside of Asia.
The definitions of “Brand” are broad and seemingly cannot be put in few lines or sentences. To capture the basic knowledge upon the term, it is with conditions. The definition slightly changes and differ along with the changes in the economic, social, culture, technology, lifestyle and even till geography matters. The term “Brand” does not necessary only evolve and play around companies or organization but also can come from a country or a nation itself. In this study case, Branding played a vital role in the success of the Global Hansik Campaign.
Meanwhile the term or word “Nation”, quoted by J. V. Stalin, in 1913, that “A nation is an historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological makeup manifested in a community of culture” he then continued quoted that nationality is just not to be seen as a racial or tribal phenomenon but seeing its most five essential features. First and foremost, there should be a stable community where they all share a common language to communicate, has a distinct territory, economic cohesion, thus owns a collective character. An brief explanation by (Bottomore, 1983, p. 344) assumed that a positive political is formed as a nation under these characters . A definite historical conditions that belongs to a specific epoch with the rise of capitalism and the struggles of the rising bourgeosie under feudalism. Nation or in a basic term “community”, will always share a common history as they too shares the common territory therefore basically also shares the same culture and inherit similar habits of life. In short, the
nation is a resulted by the detail of having various elements that connects the people inside it. On the other side of opinion on the definition of what may have constitutes a nation, have been stated boldly that a nation is more impersonal, more abstract than an ethnic group. It leans towards a more cultural-political community that has become aware of its coherence, its values and its particular interest.” (Alves, 2015)
Meanwhile in (Dinnie, 2008) that it is both timely and relevantly focuses on discussing out the relevance, scope and evolution of nation branding and defined clearly that “Nation Brand” is a multi-mixed-dimensional which blends all culturally differentiation and today, this phenomenon has made numbers of countries applying in order to reach the main key goals of where it will be more in potential to attract tourists which then led to the stimulating inward investment and slowly by time boosted the country‟s exports. More and more countries around the world are embracing nation branding techniques in order to increase the currency stability, restoring and gaining international credibility and investor confidence and trust, reversing the international ratings downgrades, increasing the international political influence, stimulating a much better and stronger international partnerships as well as enhancing the nation building plan. Overall, nation branding seems to be perfectly sums up to be dealing a lot on the matters of positioning, strengthening and promoting countries in all areas in the international arena (Mecaj, July,2018).
From the own creator of the term, Anholt, emphasizes that due to the nearby globalization that this Earth experiences, the approach of the concept of “Nation- Brand” comes near to creating “competitive identity”, where when in the process of
modernization, nations on an instinct goes reconstructing on many major areas including rebuilding, reinventing, reorganized then goes to rebranded to achieve and present a much more newer integrity, competence and quality of the nation.
(Arkenbout, June, 2015). In another overview of definition perspective, nation- branding is broadly conceived as powerful market strategy to target external markets to establish and communicate a specific image of national-identity to build the flow of economic interest (Varga, 2013,p 826)
Nation Branding is an excellent choice of concept to explain the fundamental structure until the end process of how the global marketing of K-culture has been further enhanced as part of a policy of boosting its national image by investing not only in the broadband infrastructure, technology, inventing and starting Hallyu Wave in the entertainment industries globally and today still consistent on progressing its cuisine via first through gastrodiplomacy, flourishes not only in economic growth but also boosting South-Korea bilateral relations.
Instant Korean ramyeon is a perfect example of how South-Korean nation branding was so strong that its instant noodles got super popular all over the world today. Stocks of Korean instant noodles can be found in, majority of Asian markets including Western supermarkets. In 2018, it was reported that according to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (Kotra), South- Korea has become the top exporter of instant noodle products to the United States, where it was estimated that the United States imported roughly $58.62 million of instant noodles just from Korea alone, accounting for 26.6 percent of total instant noodle imports and are growing
steadily, rising up about 16.38 percent by the end of 2016. (Choi Joon-Ho, July 29, 2018)
The response of dominant citizens of Earth was very positive to the point, South-Korean instant noodles were almost everyone‟s choice and favourite. People grabs and buys at first because mainly the K-entertainment such as shows and dramas often promoted big on the products, hence able to seduce and lured people to try it out , which as time passes, created a concrete brand loyalty among instant noodle fans.
Just few years recently, in the year 2018, Samyang Foods’ Hot Chicken Flavor
Ramen becomes a global social media sensation , and sky-rocketed almost 45 percent of Samyang’s 450 billion won in current annual sales is from the exports.
(Choi Joon-Ho, July 29, 2018). In the same article, it was reported that Paldo Doshirak, a korean instant noodle brand, manage to reach sales in Russia by collecting 230 billion won, surpassing the company‟s Korean sales of 220 billion won, target of the year 2017.
Basically, few well-known brands of instant noodles such as Shin Ramyun as well as Nongshim Ramen (Jeon, February 16, 2021) has become a great symbol of products from the nation called “South-Korea”. The power of Nation Branding done by the Kimchi government even led to few Chinese companies putting Hangul (Korean alphabets) on their products on purpose to mislead the customers into
thinking that they were from South Korea, in order to increase their sales. (Chang, June 30,2018)
CHAPTER III
GENERAL DESCRIPTION 3.1 South-Korea Economy background
It is undeniable, that today South Korea makes it to the top as one of the most highly regarded countries in the world when it comes to industry and sectors of sustained growth as well as development. The outstanding performance of South Korean has shown in its economy sector over the last half-century, counting with Korean GDP (in dollars) it has increase more than 100 fold from the year 1970 to 2010 onwards. Many expert commentators have christened South Korea as the
“Germany of Asia". Even, Jim O'Neill, the creator of the BRICs acronym stated that South Korea is one of the few top nation in terms of sustained growth potential text.
(Riley, Tutor2u.net).
In the late 1990s, history shows that the nation‟s economy fell hard by the Asian Financial Markets Crisis but this led to wide-ranging economic reforms and aim of making the country more resilient to regional and global economic shocks (Riley, Tutor2u.net) , therefore the South Korean government began a huge program of fully creating and supporting for the creative sector in the nation such as steel, shipbuilding and the automotive industry in order to rebuild and pick up the pace to climb to the normal current of economy wave that was hugely caused by the Korean War that went on for three years in 1950 until 1953. (Woodier, Park, p. 3, 2017)
Successive governments have approached cultural development as a form of industry policy is a supposition amongst policy makers that this support has led to the
international success of Korean films, TV dramas, video games, and popular music.
Further supported by a continued commitment to building the country‟s high-speed broadband infrastructure, and technology, making South Korea the most connected nation in the world (Akamai Technologies, 2016).
Adding on the list point, South-Korea is actively progressing in the promotion of its cultural exports, from establishing the Korean Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) in 2008 and encouraging by opening and receiving investment in Korea‟s cultural and creative industries and push “Brand Korea” at global level (Hong, 2014).
Resulting an increased in its exports from a GDP of 25.9 percent in 1995 to 56.3 percent by the year 2012. ( (Iwulska, 2012)
Addition to that, the success of Korea‟s global YouTube sensation PSY (Park Jae-Sang) is a perfect example of how South-Korea name went soaring high in fame worldwide. Released in 2012, PSY‟s „Gangnam Style‟ music video was the first ever YouTube video to receive one billion views and, by May 2017, (Murray, updated on 2021) the number went almost to a closing of hitting 3 billion views, making PSY a global sensation than global pop sensation Justin Bieber. (Interview with Yang Hyun- Suk, YG Entertainment president, Yonhap News, 2012). It was reported by that more than 90% of K-pop YouTube streams are now consumed outside Korea, many in North America which is really helping to establish K-pop outside of Asia.
(BBCNews.com, 2015). The impact of “Psy” phenomena was so strong, that he managed to shift people eyes, music interest and curiosity toward South-Korea. In the end, he managed to debut worldwide.
Psy was not a Korean version of a big pop star. Psy was Korea's version of Psy, and it turns out that's what the world wanted – Bernie Cho Furthermore, The Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) and the Korea Foundation for International Culture Exchange (KOFICE) announced on April 10, 2016 that the Hallyu content exports from South Korea totaled 3.2 trillion won (US$2.8 billion) in 2015 alone.
Today, South-Korea is incredibly famous and well-known for its spectacular rise from being one of the poorest nation in the world to reaching a level of a well- developed country proving the world that the nation is now conceiving high-income per annually in a time expand of only one-generation. One may state that this nation may have experience the largest economic transformations in the past 60 years, given that in the past shows it‟s labor force totaled up to 28.4 million people which out of its 51.28 million of its population, its limited geographical size and it‟s insufficient natural resources (Kim, November 1991) . At this present, the country is seen to be devoted its attention to be a home to sophisticated technology and development but also pushes its might to innovation to increase promote growth, where slowly it will flourish and grow from a predominantly rural, agricultural nation into an urban, industrialized country by in a few decades.
3.2 Programs that were issued by South-Korea to developed the nation’s economy and development. (Before launching Gastrodiplomacy)
Within only in matter time in just a generation, South Korea managed to transform its economy from one of the poorest to today, one of the richest and the
advance nation in the world and all of this change lies at a main key-point, which was innovation and that was the main reason that fueled the country's remarkable economic rise over the past decades. Korean government counters mainly on its creative economy proposal in order to restore Korea‟s transition to an advanced route and heads up to an innovation-driven economy, such as;
1. Creating and developing its IT companies to be one of the best broadband networks in the world. From 2005 to 2010, South-Korea‟s IT capital has contributed a percentage points of 0.2 adding to the Korean total growth, which by data shows an overall of eight percent growth. The 2014 Global Innovation Index ranked South-Korea in the 30th position of software spending as a share of GDP, about one-third of U.S. levels. Although, IT firms in South-Korea have not fully utilized the power of using ICT to grow, the country is still at an amazing position , hence one of the leaders , in terms of the percent of the population that uses the Internet to play games or create a web page. In other words, while Korea has a great IT network and IT producers. (Atkinson, 2015). Hence, in 2017, South Korea came in at a position as the second country, after Iceland, in the world by ICT Development Index.
2. South –Korea along the way adapt and learn to finally showed amounts of impressive results of success especially in the area of Science and Technology, thus continues its push to pursue a better and well-developed R&D (Research and Development) programs. Today, the country made it as
its current goal is to focus specially on its R&D department by investing in it.
It is reported that five percent of the country‟s GDP flowed into the department, so that high sophisticated concentrate-research can be conducted on such innovative areas as space program, nuclear power, military technologies, artificial technology, pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology. (Dr.
Alexander Mechitov)
3. Locating back at the history, South Korea concentrated on its industrial efforts such as steel, shipbuilding, and automobile industries starting in the 1970‟s.
By the end of year 2018, South-Korea recognized as a successfully fifth largest steel producer in the world ahead of Russia and Germany, producing 72.7 million metric tons of steel accomplishing as the third largest exporter of steel with 31, 4 million metric tons by the year 2017. (Santacreu, 2018)
4. Although, this was not an initiated project planned by the Government of South-Korea and was conducted by local small private sector of Korea‟s entertainment industry, “the Korean wave moved forward to diverse parts of Asia, including Southeast and Central Asia, and therefore this wave reached an active penetration stage” (Hyejung, 2007, p. 6) contributed firstly by Korean TV drama back in 1997, What Is Love All About, broadcasted on state-run Chinese television, CCTV, which then set the stage for hallyu in the Republic People of China and then following an MBC-TV drama, Jealous, which was imported as the first popular cultural product from South Korea in 1993 (Kim, 2007, p. 15) followed up next by Korean drama series ,
“Daejangguem” that made a huge hit in Taiwan (Kim , 2007, p. 24). These early bestowal paved the way of what was called by the Chinese as Hallyu wave.