Not Buying iPods Becomes A Patriotic Issue In South Korea

from the made-in-south-korea dept

Apparently, the widespread success of the Apple iPod in South Korea is ticking off some Korean consumer electronics companies, who are taking out newspaper ads trying to encourage a patriotic boycott of the iPod in favor of South Korean-made portable media devices. Of course, the simple solution to this issue is to make a better product.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    dorpus, 2 Mar 2005 @ 2:59am

    Not to be taken lightly

    "Buy patriotic" is a much stronger theme in that small, homogeneous country. Korean pop culture loves to make imitations of other singers from Japan or the USA, so it's not clear how strong a stomach ipod will have for Korean consumer tastes. Every week, hundreds of new songs that sound just like US/Japanese pop music are spewed out by local artists, with the lyrics changed so Koreans like it better.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      nonuser, 2 Mar 2005 @ 5:00am

      Re: Not to be taken lightly

      They risk someone like Motorola running ads that picture *their* ads. If Koreans aren't going to buy America's hit products, why should Americans buy theirs.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        seth, 2 Mar 2005 @ 6:57am

        Re: Not to be taken lightly

        If Koreans aren't going to buy America's hit products, why should Americans buy theirs.

        Because they are cheaper. Americans do not tend to show much solidarity when it comes to boycotting a country's goods when those goods are cheaper than their American counterparts.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          Jim H., 2 Mar 2005 @ 9:43am

          Re: Not to be taken lightly

          I'm sorry which particular products do Americans still manufacture? I don't know of any American branded electronics which are made in the U.S.!

          link to this | view in chronology ]

          • identicon
            Chomper, 2 Mar 2005 @ 10:02am

            Re: Not to be taken lightly

            Hahaha, finally someone who is at least educated in these issues.

            America has barely any competitors to South Korea in TV's other devices of the such. Take a look at Electronics stores. Zenith is owned by LG.

            If anything, it's just a last ditch effort by the South Korean MP3 companies. I've seen a lot of them and they are good products.

            link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    DannoHung, 2 Mar 2005 @ 5:31am

    A company appealing to social mores rather than in

    INCONCEIVABLE!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    alaric, 2 Mar 2005 @ 7:17am

    Free Market?

    So what happened to free market and competition? Nothing yet. Product from a korean company has an advantage because it is korean. That is part of the market.

    I must i am little surprised that mp3 players have stirred up so much emotion though.

    Where does apple make those things anyway? China? Taiwan? malaysia? Maybe its nice to see people caring about employing their own citizens, something americans don't care about

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Dominic, 3 Mar 2005 @ 6:11am

      Re: Free Market?

      Americans to care about employing their citizens. The problem is that we also care about paying them. That's why the LOW paying jobs go to Asia and our standard of living increases.

      5.6% unemployment rate in America. Germany is over 13% unemployment. Before you spout your 'Hate America' dialog, get some education.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Bob, 2 Mar 2005 @ 8:44am

    American Competition

    When Koreans can't compete with iPod, Apple really is doing something right.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 Mar 2005 @ 1:29pm

    what is Korea good for anyway....

    better you say it...

    the only thing I see coming out of Korea is a ton of spam mail...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    oranckay, 2 Mar 2005 @ 4:58pm

    boycott?

    Where does the Chosun story or any other mention a boycott?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Vincent, 2 Mar 2005 @ 8:36pm

    No Subject Given

    First, to take the companies' side. Let's say your a Korean company. You know some Koreans might by the argument that they should buy locally to fend off the latest affront of those damn imperialists. If I were a Korean company and thought that would work and increase my sales, I'd do the same thing. That's the joy of a free market economy: companies can do whatever they want to if they can trick some unthinking consumers to make a few purchases. And that includes pretending there's some fuzzy nationalistic advantage to buying domestic at a higher price and/or lesser quality.
    Then there's the obvious other side... buying because of the country of origin - as opposed to product quality - lets domestic producers sit more complacently with inferior products rather than stepping up to the plate and really competing with the threatening companies.
    Let's not kid ourselves here though... Korea's not the only one to have companies jump on the nationalism boat to boost flagging sales. In particular, this sounds a heckuva lot like U.S. automakers' reaction to Japanese imports. U.S. automakers eventually decided to get down to business.
    In the end though I question how effective this will be. Even in this era of Republican-induced hyper-patriotism, if you started flying the flag and telling American kids to buy Xbox instead of Playstation 2, how effective do you think that would be? I doubt it'll be much more effective in Korea.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    oranckay, 3 Mar 2005 @ 7:13am

    Here's the ad!

    The advert in question can be found here. Again, there is no mention of a "boycott." The company just promises to defend Korea's pride as an MP3 device producing nation. It does not mention Apple by name. Also, it starts by discussing how its a problem to entrust the work of producing electronic handheld dictionaries to foreign companies (which the company also produces), the defense of the Korean language being celebrated cause because of what the Japanese tried to do to Korean during colonial rule. Microsoft learned that quickly, though it was being heavy handed about expanding its market share in Korea.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      David Oh, 12 Aug 2005 @ 9:41pm

      Re: Here's the ad!

      Thank you for being the only one who actually did some research and found this article to be essentially a lie. Techdirt editorial staff should be ashamed.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.