![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/KB-EXO-ad.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A video that recently hit the internet may well turn out to be the year\u2019s most effective piece of Korea-promotion \u2014 if not the decade\u2019s most effective \u2014 and Korea\u2019s official promoters had nothing at all to do with it. Titled\u00a0\u201cseoul_wave,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0the seven-minute production presents a day in the life of Korea\u2019s capital as hyperkinetically shot and painstakingly edited by an American \u201cnomadic filmmaker on an endless world tour\u201d named\u00a0Brandon Li<\/a>. This might not sound like high-priority viewing for those who actually live in Seoul, and I might never have watched it myself had not seen it praised by other expatriates here. Not the easiest group to please, they keep their knives perpetually out for cynical or ignorant Korea-boosting \u2014 in other words, for much of the Korea-boosting done to date.<\/p>\n
Take, for instance, the Korea Tourism Organization\u2019s \u201cHave You Ever\u2026 ?\u201d campaign. In its\u00a0teaser video<\/a>, published the very same day as \u201cseoul_wave,\u201d members of the boy band EXO ask questions like \u201cHave you ever slept?\u201d and \u201cHave you ever been to a restaurant?\u201d To which a variety of non-Koreans, mostly Westerners, provide responses, to the best of their ability, like \u201cI\u2019ve never slept like that\u201d and \u201cNever been to a restaurant like that.\u201d Presumably they mean they\u2019ve never slept like they could in Korea and never been to a restaurant like the ones they could go to in Korea, but the generic, not especially Korean-looking backgrounds against which the speak only muddy the meaning further. But the awkwardness goes deeper stil: the EXO boys\u2019 words have clearly been dubbed over, a risky choice given the obsessiveness and hypersensitivity of K-pop fan bases.<\/p>\n