Meet and Greet

Hey, what is this sticker I see everywhere? I asked one of my students as I met him on the street, walking to school. I pointed to the sticker on the back windshield of the car, a black oval, with two white cartoon-ish children’s faces, a boy and a girl, smiling, and lots of Korean writing. “Say hello,” he answered. What do you mean, say hello? “Well, Koreans don’t really speak each other. You know, on the street. Maybe Westerners say hi to stranger. Or smile. Koreans, no. So, this sticker, it means, be first say hello.” I nodded. I don’t know how long this campaign has been around, but it doesn’t seem to have made an impact.

On television, I saw an interesting commercial. A man, maybe from France, maybe from Italy, was in Seoul, lost, searching on his map for the World Cup Stadium (the games begin this week). He tried to stop many people to ask for directions, but everyone confronted him with an angry scowl and walked away. Finally, he stopped a little boy on a bike. The boy looked scared of this big, tall stranger. The man pointed on the map; the boy gave him a big smile and a ride on his bike. The slogan was something to the effect of “Help a stranger, make a friend. World Cup, Korea Team Fighting!”

I’ve got tickets to a couple of games – it’s going to be interesting to see if the advertising has worked…