Glocalization: Taking the edge off Globalization

- Do you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese in France?
- They don't call it a quarter pounder with cheese?
- Hell no, they got the metric system. They don't know what the fuck a quarter pound is. They call it a royale with cheese.

The term globalization is becoming increasingly common around the world. For some it represents the future and how the world may change to become more equal, with merging cultures, ethnicities, economic systems, social justices and political ideals. For others, it is a pernicious force that poses a danger to local markets, domestic culture and unique customs. Either way, no matter what you think, it is happening.

Sometimes, foreign customs may seep into a culture naturally. When something is practical, it makes sense to follow suit. For example, using knives and forks began somewhere and spread throughout the Western world and eventually spread overseas and across distant continents. Actually it is thought that forks were developed in ancient Egypt and knives were a product of France, yet this perfect couple met somewhere along the lines of history and we take their practical use for granted.

On the other hand, global trends may barge in on a culture regardless of their ultimate use. Think of the McDonalds and Starbucks around the world. We see them everywhere whether we want to or not. Franchises are not always welcome and small Italian city showed this when locals opted to continue eating local goods back in 2002. After opening in 2001, the McDonalds restaurant in Altamura shut its doors in only 2002 (1).  In light of the various attitudes regarding embracing globalization or protecting traditional heritage, there is one thing that helps bridge that divide: ‘glocalization.’

Glocalization is, as the name suggests, the mix of both globalization and localization. This process involves localizing a foreign ‘product’ to keep local elements intact. Glocalization takes the edge off the product and makes it more palatable for native mouths, eyes, ears and minds. The most common place we see this is in food. Let’s go back to McDonalds and Starbucks, two experts in glocalization. South Korea is home to the Bulgogi Burger, the Kimchi Burger and the Shanghai Spicy Chicken Burger (2). In Thailand, Ronald McDonald is seen bowing down to local customers, as is local custom (3). Going one step further, McDonalds in France got rid of poor Ronald and replaced him with Asterix, the well-known French kids cartoon character (4).

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" class=" "] Glocal goodies await inside![/caption]

Similarly, Starbucks is another fox when it comes to entering foreign farms. Living in Korea, I have noticed that Insadong in Seoul is a major tourist zone, bustling with traditional arts, crafts and food. When Starbucks tried to set up shop here, local residents and store keepers were greatly annoyed, as referenced in this. In order to succeed, the store name Starbucks has been written in the Korean script hangeul. The interior also matches the local mood, with Korean rice cakes (deok) and lemon teas on sale inside.

On its latest expedition, Starbucks also made a foray into the Muslim world but angered locals in Saudi Arabia with its smiling mermaid logo. As local residents have strict views on the role and place of women in soceity, the logo has now been edited with the mermaid removed (5).

Starbucks has even managed to set up a store right in the Forbidden City, Beijing, China. Starbucks attempted to adjust smoothly by making things appear somewhat local, however this particular example shows how glocalization doesn't always succeed; Starbucks eventually shut up shop after intense protests from Chinese locals.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="420" class=" "] Fobidden City. Forbidden Cafe? Nope[/caption]

 

Glocalization is not only limited to food. In the music world, South Korea, which for me is majorly over-globalized, is another expert at localizing foreign products. The success of Korean pop, or K-pop as it is better known, has spread to other Asian nations like Vietnam, China and Taiwan. The spread of K-pop brings economic and cultural advantages for South Korea but undermines local talent elsewhere.  In fact, due to K-pop, which is supposedly Korean, is being limited in China as it is bringing in Western fashion styles, music and consumerism with it. However, clever marketers in Korea saw a perfect chance to seize upon; EXO - the Chinese/Korean boy group (6).

Moving onto the film world, Hollywood also smartly conceals localized content in its films to boost worldwide sales. For example, it may be hire a Korean actor in a Hollywood blockbuster to shore up sales in Asia. The actor may not be the best for the position, but it will guarantee big cinema attendances in Korea (7).

Even if you have watched the same movie, drunk the same cup of Starbucks’ coffee or had the same Mcburger in two countries, perhaps you could see that not every aspect of your experience was identical in both. Glocalization may seem like something sneaky that is used to make more money, and yes it may be. But like the knife and the fork, new things can be practical for us and we need to embrace them. As globalization increases, I think we should enjoy watching how a product or service adapts to local needs.

Pursuing Happy - Episode 5

(c) jewishvirtuallibrary

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DISCLAIMER: Photo from the interwebs.

In this weeks talk, I am the one being asked a question. There is a joke. "Two Jews, three opinions."  As you will find out the Jewish method of having a discussion is asking each other constant questions. When ever I am with the Rabbi he always has the best questions and stories waiting. In this episode I have a talk with Rabbi Osher Litzman, the Chabbad Rabbi of Korea, about the Jewish perspectives, as well as his, on happiness. Enjoy, and thank you always,

Jarod

Pursuing Happy Episode 4

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During my time at Lotte Department Store with Simon we got thirsty and decided to go down to the food court. Coincidentally there was a little juice stand called happy juice. One of the employees at "Happy Juice" was kind enough to give me an interview after his shift ended. His name is Joon, he is a young kid, a student with a dream of studying in New Zealand. I'm not sure how happy he actually is but he had some interesting ideas that he picked up along his travels in India. I guess sometimes we need a guru, right?  There is no photo of Joon, he is a shy kid and didn't want to provide a photo so here is one of my abstract works I made. I call it cave ghost. Folks, when the interviewee is not willing to provide a picture for the site I will substitute with one of my works. All are on sale. ^^

 

Gangnam, COEX Style

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCgd5bOdj_Y

 

On Saturday I took a rare trip to Gangnam with my boyfriend for a leisurely stroll around COEX Mall, the largest underground mall in the world—nope, sorry, just Asia (darn you, Canada). Short for COnvention Centers and EXhibition Halls, both of which populate its higher floors, COEX also boasts an aquarium, a movie theater, a Hyundai Department Store—with all the food court goodness it implies, as you, dear reader, shall soon see—and a kimchi museum.

Every time I muster up the energy to take the long subway voyage down to COEX (which is not often, given the high density of great shopping and, more importantly, food, elsewhere in Seoul), I swallow a laugh as I remember my first visit to the mall last summer. Mistakenly believing that it was “the largest mall in Asia” and (in)conveniently failing to realize that it was underground, I spent an hour wandering around outside Samsung Station wondering why all I could see were a bunch of hotels, some statues, and an exhibition hall. A shameful peek at my tablet confirmed my folly—and the importance of at least Googling a place before you (try to) go there.

 

We entered from Samsung Station on Line 2, following the throngs of people marching steadily through the labyrinthine tunnels between the subway and the mall proper. Along the way we passed several signs apologizing for the current construction, which had begun last summer. According to a large display near the mall entrance, the building is being remodeled to make it more environmentally sustainable, a process that apparently involves the installation of large, swooping skylights over much of its area. I imagine that these windows are somehow layered and glazed to provide “sustainable” insulation, but the display did not offer that kind of important detail.

Our first stop was Bandi and Luni’s (반디앤루니스) bookstore, a sprawling maze of literature that (almost) gives the Kyobo Mungo (교보문고) in Gwanghwamun a run for its money. I had just finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami and was looking to escape the empty lost-friend feeling that comes from leaving the world of an incredible story, so I wandered over to the fiction section and picked up 노르웨이의 숲 (Norwegian Wood) and 스푸트니크의 연인 (Sputnik Sweetheart). Even though the latter was a locally published paperback it still cost over 10,000 won. I had forgotten just how expensive some stores in COEX can be, I mused as I sadly put the book back on the shelf.

Outside the bookstore was a small exposition on new games for the Nintendo DS, complete with several rows of consoles loaded with games for trial by the public as well as a large display of Luigi’s Castle trailers being presented by two women with microphones. I tried out a game called 동물의 숲 (Animal Forest), which, at least for me, involved a lot of running through different buildings and hitting townspeople with a butterfly net. Then I played through a level of Mario Brothers 2 DS, with graphics that were almost depressingly better than the original despite being run from a computer about a tenth the size. After a while the swarm of children, mostly boys, pushing and shoving around me started to jostle my activation energy of annoyance, so I managed to tear my boyfriend away from what was apparently a life-or-death match of Mario Tennis and be on our way.





We started to get a bit hungry, so we strolled over to a sign that promised 中国料理 (Chinese food) at a stand-alone restaurant not seemingly attached to any food courts. Surprised at the 6000-won 짜장면 and similarly inexpensive boiled and fried dumplings (水饺/물만구 and 煎饺/구운 만두, respectively) my boyfriend and I took a booth and ordered a bowl of beef noodle soup (牛肉汤面/우육탕면) and dumplings. The beef soup was standard—big slices of meat with scallions and mushrooms, salty, tangy base, noodles cut from dough. The fried dumplings were nothing like the ones I had seen during my nearly three years in Beijing–larger, crispier, and more reminiscent of deep-fried American-Cantonese crab rangoon than the lightly pan-fried Northern fare to which I am accustomed—but still delicious. The food came out with kimchi, pickled daikon, and a bottle of cold water. One of the downsides to eating Chinese food in Korea is that it lacked both China’s complementary looseleaf teas and Korea’s generally extensive banchan services.



After lunch we wandered through rows of small brand-name clothing shops, looking but not thinking to purchase anything. I remembered my dad storming out of a Great Outdoors in COEX the summer before after having seen the 120,000-won price tag on a spandex shirt that could have cost anywhere from $20 to $60 in the United States (and, admittedly, elsewhere in Seoul). The prices in the mall were really hit-or-miss; you could easily be put off by $11 paperbacks and $100+ undershirts, but then, the two of us had just enjoyed a delicious and filling $15 lunch at a clean and comfortable restaurant.

At one point we found ourselves inside Asem Hobby (아셈하비), a hobby store selling puzzles, action figures, and all manner of wooden and diecast model. I curled my lip at a few $50 puzzles, played a bit with a set of (really cool) predatory animal action figures outfitted as some kind of fantasy MMORPG-esque warriors, and marveled at the predesigned do-it-yourself (sort of) model cars, planes, boats, and buildings—and at the swarms of boys, slightly older than the Nintendo DS crowd but still male in depressing proportions, inspecting the merchandise. I thought back to my own childhood days building popsicle stick boats and scrap wood dollhouses in the basement and wondered whether hobby shops in the United States saw a similarly homogeneous demographic.

We wandered a bit more, finding ourselves back at the other end of the bookstore (it really was huge, with multiple entrance points) looking at various non-book items. Hardcover diaries. Pens. An eraser installed into the end of a paintbrush holder for easy handling by artists. Scraps of leather folded into various animal shapes and sold at ridiculous prices. More action figures, this time dinosaurs and unicorns.

We left from a different exit and walked past an external display of discount books (only after crying through a photograph book about rescue dogs) and meandered through a series of cafes and ever-present snack shops—yogurt, waffles, red bean shaved ice (팥빙수/pat bingsu). We stopped briefly to look inside an imported foods shop, where I got overly excited about a package of Rocky Mountain fruit-flavored pastel mini marshmallows (pink, mint green, and white) that I hadn’t eaten since I was about five, as well as about a package of Japanese sweet chewy dried seaweed snacks that I haven’t seen elsewhere in Korea.





We were starting to get hungry again (this tends to happen a lot), so we took a detour to the Hyundai Department Store in hopes of raiding its food court. We were not disappointed. As we traveled down the escalator we were graced with an extensive fiesta of myriad food stations, including several bakeries, dumpling and chicken sellers, salad bars, sandwich shops, cafeteria-style Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and fusion restaurants, and dozens of dessert oases—ddeok, mochi, gelato, cheesecakes, pastries, even a Mrs. Field’s and a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. Oh, yeah, and a full-on grocery store. My boyfriend, ever the fan of European-style food (like many of the other pretzel-chowing coffee-guzzling Korean food court guests, it seemed), bought some unprecedentedly soft and chewy whole-grain-walnut-cranberry-date bread at the bakery and a modest sampling of imported sausage and cheeses at the grocery store. I chose a small seltzer water and a bottle of kiwi-kale juice, and we sat for a bit on a cafeteria bench near the Vietnamese restaurant to nurse our newfound treasures.







I checked my watch—time to go home. We had spent a thoroughly entertaining four hours inside the mall and had only partially covered two of its four zones. Granted, my boyfriend and I might share a greater affinity to food than the average mall-crawler and COEX is certainly dominated by more than its share of delicious snacks, but isn’t that precisely part of the mall’s charm? Whether you’re a money-laden fashionista, an exposition enthusiast, a book fanatic, movie aficionado, budding marine biologist, or just a window-shopping food-shoveling pig like me, COEX, enabled by its size to offer a high density of attractions appealing to all sorts of different people, is a justifiably recommended destination for anybody with a free afternoon and a thirst for some novelty.