Day 17 (8.29)- 귀엽다 Overload

One thing Korea and America have in common most definitely is their obsession with cutesy things, but as Americans have slowly waned away from the kitschy and cutesy for more edgy pop culture (see Adam West’s Batman vs Christian Bale’s for your prime American example), Koreans have embraced it still. Yes, we still have serious Korean dramas and action films, but the fact that I can’t walk into a 7-11 without seeing Pokemon or Kakao Friends on absolutely every piece of merchandise shows that there is a stark difference from America.

At Namsan Tower alone, I counted at least 10 giant sculptures shaped like well-known foreign and local characters. Some of my favorites include:

Lin Lin (don’t hurt Lin Lin, Lin Lin is fragile)

And more….

And this (I’m assuming unintentionally) satanically-lit Pikachu.

Pandas and Pokemon seem to go hand-in-hand with Seoul actually…as I’ve seen quite a few.

Vending machine storefronts is pretty common to see on most busy blocks. They’re like self-serve arcades, always equip with an ubiquitous Pokemon claw machine.

Then you’ve got more obscure things like this shark in a shopping complex

There’s a store called Artbox that also specializes in its own cute characters, similar to Line friends and Kakao friends…the common theme being cuteness.

So why is the cute factor an even bigger deal here than back at home? I think it comes down to the culture of Korea being much more family-oriented than the West. Cute things in a way resemble children, or pets, and the fondness people have for adorable things stems from a very hardly-ingrained nurturing factor. Cute is attractive, as even with people, more women in Korea aim for a more youthful, cute makeup look than the sexy cat-eye that is so popular with the West. It may also just have to do with that fact that different cultures use different things to sell. In America, the phrase has been “sex sells” and it’s awfully apparent in car ads with hot women, and those extremely strange Carl’s Junior commercials that make people cringe, yet everyone talks about it the next day. In Korea, they’ve emphasized more that cute sells better to a wider audience. Everyone loves Kakao friends, no matter age or gender, as long as they know Kakao. When people see cute things, they’re impulsed to buy it, even if it’s just the packaging….I myself am guilty of this of course.

We could all use a little more cute in our lives, couldn’t we?