Fun with Statistics - The 3% solution
I just got done reading Occidentalism latest post in which a Korea Telecom ad claims that 3% of the world calls the Sea of Japan the East Sea, and thats a "start". Something about that sounded a bit odd to me. So lets go to the numbers.The Wikipedia helpfuly lists that there are 80 million Koreans in the world. Wiki also helpfully puts world population at 6.5 billion. This means that Koreans make up bit more than 1% of the population. So really, KT "start" is really a third less impressive than it seems.
Meanwhile the aforementioned Wiki article says that the world is growing at a rate of 1.4% per year. Meanwhile the CIA world fact book places South Korean population growth rate at .42%. Meaning just to stay AT 3% of the worlds population saying its the East Sea, Korea will have to convince 3 more people in the world for every Korean born.
3% may be a start, but thery're losing traction fast!!!
posted by Dram Man @ 11:14 PM
4 Comments:
6.5 TRILLION? I think they meant BILLION. I also think that the idea of 3% calling it East Sea is about as grounded in reality as Seoul being the 'Hub of Northeast Asia' or the 'Korean Wave' that is sweeping the world.
Could it be possible that 3% of the world can speak Korean? Methinks not, BUT when speaking Korea, I too call it 'East Sea'.
Regardless, I wish that these Korean Kompanies would stop pushing hypernationalism. Let them sell their phones and leave it at that.
tmc> Your right on the billion. Sorry, the Sofitel letter is contagious apparently.
On the details you may have a point, but if you crank the numbers you find Korean dispora (possibly non-Korean speaking) effect the numbers little.
As far as marketing using nationalism, I am neutral to the idea. What ever works. You can pull up quite a few US ads with simular sentiments, especialy around the Fourth of July.
Frankly the ad the 3% was lifted from (click to the refering blog post to see it) I thought was a rather good ad for Korea. It is showing the benefits of using KT service (connectivity with people) in what a local would see as a warm fuzzy way.
What I think was the bad choice is wasting the time to translate that orgianial Korean ad for broadcast where ever (likely on state-funded Arirang TV). Its almost like they sat in a meeting and said "What is the most foolish and embrassing Korean ad we can translate?"
By the way trillion/billion error corrected. Sorry again for the confusion.
I agree that Non-Koreans who can speak Korean are not a significant number of people in terms of world population. I call B***sh*t on their claim of 3%.
China refers to the East China Sea as the East Sea and Vietnam calls the South China Sea the East Sea. Also the Baltic is referred to as the East Sea in the Nordic countries. Perhaps the VANKers and their friends in the ad industry should lay off the rest of the world and get to work on promoting Korea instead of making the country look like one full of petty, whiny, overgrown children.
On another note, I thought you'd like this-- http://oslo.hp.infoseek.co.jp/east_asia.png
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