Koreanization hits US advertising?

This "not for women" advertisement for a new Dr Pepper product would be a blatant example of what we call gendered advertising:

Looking for a drink worthy of a man's man? Don't cue that Dos Equis commercial just yet -- the maker of Dr Pepper is rolling out Dr Pepper Ten, a 10-calorie soda with an ad campaign that asserts that the soft drink is "not for women." ...

This isn't the first time food products have blatantly targeted men -- Pocky biscuits, popular in Japan, have a Men's Pocky edition (in blue packaging) as well.

Other diet soft drinks -- such as Coke Zero and Pepsi Max -- have been marketed toward a male audience as well, but perhaps not as aggressively as Dr Pepper Ten, according to the Associated Press. One ad involves wrestling snakes, shooting lasers and engaging in other such 'macho' activities.

"A Facebook page for the drink contains an application that allows it to exclude women from viewing content, which includes games and videos aimed at being 'manly,'" the story explains. "For instance, there's a shooting gallery where you shoot things like high heels and lipstick, for example."

It's not made clear why appealing to men includes using deadly weapons to destroy symbols associated with women.

I wonder what The Grand Narrative would have to say, since he says a lot about this phenomenon in Korean marketing.

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Koreanization hits American ports?

This kind of organized union violence and property damage — orchestrated in part online — is something you would expect to read about a Korean shipbuilding plant, not a port in Washington State:

Hundreds of angry longshoremen stormed through a grain shipping terminal in Longview, Wash., early Thursday and held security guards at bay while descending on a disputed train full of grain, cutting brake lines and dumping cargo.

The predawn labor protests came after a clash with police Wednesday in which hundreds of longshoremen blocked railroad tracks near Vancouver, Wash., to prevent grain cargo from reaching an export terminal 45 miles farther west. In that protest, they far outnumbered officers, pelting police with rocks and spraying them with pepper spray, police said.

There have been no serious injuries, but 19 protesters were arrested on charges of trespassing during the initial protests Wednesday.

Police were not present during Thursday's predawn action at the terminal, but they said six security guards were held inside a guard shack while protesters attacked the train, broke windows in the shack and pushed a private security vehicle into a ditch.

"Yesterday there were probably 300 or 400 of them. Today there was even more, and we were just outnumbered," Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha said in an interview.

"At this point, we hear there are longshoremen coming down from the Seattle-Tacoma area to assist. When the longshoremen were leaving, they were saying they would be back, this was not over," he said.

The call for mobilization hit the International Longshore and Warehouse Union's Facebook page Thursday morning: "Call out the troops, we're going on a road trip!" one union member wrote.

Hey, longshoremen's union, thanks for giving the anti-union Tea Party types ammo in the ideology wars about collective bargaining and labor movements.

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Koreanization hits American universities?

I've lived in Seoul off and on since I was a teenager, and back then, it would have been hard to imagine Korea setting a trend or becoming noteworthy in much of anything. But times have changed: We have American girls wearing little tiny backpacks to school, Chuck has an oldboy poster up in his room, and now the four-year picnic of prestige.

Yeah, see if you can spot the "oh, that's exactly like South Korea" aspect of this story:

Students are battling to get into the best schools, putting more time into preparing for college entrance exams, sculpting their high school resumes, and even hiring high-priced college admissions consultants. Oddly, they’re not studying as much once they get in. How do we explain this apparent personality transformation from energetic applicant to disengaged matriculant?

It may be that the college you attend has become a more important signal of student ability than it used to be, and your class rank less important. Differences in average student ability between colleges have increased over time, while differences in student ability within colleges have decreased. If students at your college are now more similar to you, employers may learn a lot about you from the name of your alma mater. This may help explain both the brutal competition and the post-admission collapse: the perception is that getting in is what really matters. Once you’re there, the battle is all but over.

Okay, so there may be only a little actual Korean influence here, but the trend toward what is happening in South Korea is striking (although grade inflation in many South Korean universities is on its way out).

Hitting American shores soon

Forget "Homefront." This is the real Korean invasion.