In our quest to learn a little more about the world we’ve embarked on the World Bra Tour to examine how different countries approach advertising something as simple as a woman’s bra.  Last time we checked out the latest undergarment fashions in Germany.  This time we go to Asia and see how Korea advertises bra’s and other intimate clothing.  Here we learn not all countries’ bras are advertised and sold in the same way.

How do you say “Bra” in Korean?

I figure it’s a good place to start learning to say how “Bra” in korean.  According to google translate Bra in Korean is “브래지어.”  I can’t read Korean script so this didn’t helped me.  I plugged this into a Korean text-to-speech tool and found that it sounds like this:

To my ears it sounds like “pu-ree-jiao” (my apologies if I’ve butchered the language)

I thought knowing how to say 브래지어 (“bra” in Korean) would help me find some good commercials, but in then end just searching in English seemed to work better.

Vivien

Click here to view the embedded video.

When I first found this commercial, I wasn’t even sure if it was a bra commercial.  At first I thought it might just be a slide show some fan put together featuring pictures of his favorite model or actress, but if you keep watching it changes from a slideshow to a very short “live” video.  I know it’s a bra commercial because at the 27 second mark they flash a quick shot of a bra (evidence below).

Vivien bra's meant to be worn, not seen

It was interesting to see how there was very little focus on the bra and instead more focus on the model making different poses.  Not wanting to assume that all Vivien commercials are like this I looked through some more and found this one.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This one was not a slide show, but of all the bra commercials that I have seen up to now (and I have seen my fair share of them now…all in the name of research) this Vivien commercial has got to be the most scientific I’ve seen.  At the 14 second mark ithey introduce a high tech looking shot of a computer analyzing the flexibility of the bra’s wire.

High tech computers created Vivien bras

What’s interesting to note about both of the above Vivien bra commercials is that neither of the models are actually shown wearing a bra.  In both commercials the bras are just lying about, but never visibly worn by a human.

I was curious to see what the online store looked like and equally as curious to see if their catalogs were as racy as the German bra catalogs we had featured last time.  It took a little digging but I found Vivien’s e-shop for bras.  Immediately you can see there’s a big difference in how they sell bra’s in Korea vs. Germany and even the United States.

That’s right, if you look closely just at the above screen shot from their e-catalog of the 8 models wearing bras only 2 are clearly human, everyone else is a mannequin.

Venus

This Venus bra commercial is different from the Vivien commercials since it actually shows a human wearing a bra.  However, if you watched it you might have noticed that the person wearing the bra might not necessarily be the woman who was featured in the beginning of the commercial.  It could have been a body double.  The other thing to note with this commercial is how much more dramatic it was compared to the other commercials (ie not as scientific).  They have crying, running, and opera music.

Looking a little further back to a 2007 Venus bra commercial we can see that Venus in has decided to show more skin in their recent commercials.

You’ll notice in this commercial they didn’t show the model or any person for that matter wearing a bra.  They have kept the same dramatic almost artsy feel to their commercials.  This one also seems to have more talking than most bra commercials.

The below commercial has got to be my favorite Venus bra commercial.  Again there’s no actual shot of anyone wearing a bra, but the men shooting the silver beams of light is highly amusing.

Venus does set themselves apart from Vivien by featuring real models in their catalog wearing the actual products.

Overall Lessons Learned

Korean bra commercials are definitely more conservative than German bra commercials (and for that matter the United States).  It seems like most of the focus is on the functionality of the bra (ie the comfort) rather than focusing on the sexiness the underwear will make the customer feel.  Even more interesting if you were paying attention to the e-catalogs for the bra’s there are pre-dominantly non-asian women modeling the clothes…or in Vivien’s case non-human’s modeling the underwear.

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After featuring foreigners who spoke Chinese really fluently, I decided to look into foreigners who could speak Korean fluently.  In my search I came across a KBS (Korean Broadcasting Show) called “미녀들의 수다.”  “Global Talk Show” is the official English translation of the show according to KBS, but other English translations include: Talk with beauties, Talking with beauties, a Chat with Beauties, and even the Beauties’ Chatterbox.  The premise of the show is quite simple.  Get beautiful foreign females who live in Korea and get them together to discuss various topics related to Korea.  

The panel of females includes women from such countries as New Zealand, Canada, Peru, Japan, etc…here’s a screenshot from the official 미녀들의 수다 (Global Talk Show) website highlighting some of the female panelists on the show (click on the image to view the full list of panelists):

Wikipedia’s brief description states the Global Talk Show or a Chat with Beauties:

is a television program on Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) in South Korea. The show is a survey of foreign women who reside in South Korea who discuss their experiences and cultures in talk show format. After high viewer ratings from its first broadcast on October 7th, 2006 during the Korean harvest festival holiday, it became a regularly broadcast program starting November 26th, 2006.

Here’s an English guided video tour of  미녀들의 수다 (Global Talk Show):

And here’s a sample portion of the show that someone has subtitled in English (warning some of the English translated is not perfect, but it’s definitely better than nothing):

Apparently the show isn’t without critics as discovered by A Year in Mokpo who found that:

When the show began the women on the panel were mostly old hands, Korea-wise, in particular American Leslie Benson, who’s spent 11 years in Korea and speaks fluent Korean. The show was mostly people who know Korea well telling Koreans about their own country, gently pointing out some of Korea’s less proud aspects, in particular, its sexism.
…
Well after plodding these well-worn boards for a long time, these topics have ceased to be interesting. Anybody out there who watches this program will notice that in an effort to maintain the interest of basically talking about in-your-face old ladies, drinking soju and eating dog meat, they have changed the format from ‘knowledgeable foreigners discuss their experiences in Korea thoughtfully’ to ‘buckwild foreign chicks who don’t know anything about Korea and can barely speak Korean say shocking, uninformed things in barely understandable Korean’

I can’t really comment on the quality of their spoken Korean, but I know the young attractive female beauties of “A Chat with Beauties” are much better than I am, but then again that isn’t saying much!

**Update**

I found some more info the show and these “Beauties.”  If you scroll down the page it lists some very basic information on each of the hosts (like what ethnicity they are and their picture).  Check it out here.

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Some of you may or may not be familiar with the folk musical comedy duo named Flight of the Conchords.  They are originally from New Zealand and dub themselves “Formerly New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo a capella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo.”  As you might be able to tell Flight of the Conchords aren’t your typical band.  HBO loved them so much that in 2007 they launched their own show appropriately called Flight of the Conchords.

On the show it follows Bret and Jermaine (their real names) as they try to start a successful band in the United States.  They have little sketches within the show where they sing songs.  These songs are not ones you would here on the raido.  Their song topics range from everything from robots taking over the human race to too many men dancing on the dance floor.  More interestingly though is a recent music video they did featuring Brett singing Korean karaoke.  Here they are parodying the normally irrelevant and silly videos that play in the background of the karaoke screens.

It actually sounds pretty good!  To give you an idea of what Korean karaoke videos sometimes look like I’ve included this as video as evidence.  This is supposedly a real North Korean karaoke video.  I can’t confirm if this is true or not, but if anyone knows please let me know.

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