Korean President Bak Geun-hye (centre)

Huffington Post Korea

By Gwak Sang-a

A Chinese-character motto for the year 2015 has been selected. From five candidates a committee of 886 academics has picked a result: Hon/yong/mu/do 昏庸無道, which translates as “[the entire world is heading in] a dark and dizzying direction”. The Academic Newspaper explains the phrase in more detail: the first two characters, hun/yong refer to a foolish and incompetent monarch [or elected leader – in this case, President Bak Geun-hye] diverging from the correct path, represented by gong/do. The phrase originates from a description in Confucius’ Analects which discusses “the true path of a high ruler” (cheon/ha/mu/do, 天下無道).

Koryeo University professor Ee Seung-hwan acerbically pointed out the flaws in Bak Geun-hye’s leadership: “At the start of the year the situation with MERS was chaotic, and was not controlled by the government; we saw its incompetence. By mid-year [public] pressure on the ruling party to retire was very damaging to separation of the legal, administrative and judiciary arms and the parliamentary process. Towards the end of the year the government’s history textbook controversy caused another serious situation [the government brought in plans to issue a single history textbook to all state schools, causing massive protest from teachers’ unions and left-wing commentators].”

Analysis: that this piece of news is deserving of a front-page banner on Huffington Post Korea illustrates the regard, at least in theory, with which academics are held in Korea. Academics in the UK or US who announced a Latin motto for a year would hardly expect any media interest. Of course, Chinese characters are still in everyday use in Korean newspapers as supplemental glosses for obscure words which are homophones of more common vocabulary, but most Koreans have little interest in Chinese character education. The real story here is yet another damning inditement of the Bak administration from academics; education unions in Korea lean heavily towards the left and have been stridently critical of Bak’s tenure, not least due to unpleasant memories of the reign of Bak’s father, Bak Jeong-hee, who was ruled as a brutal right-wing dictator from 1961 until his assassination in 1979.

KBS News – video

E-Land, a fashion firm with yearly sales of ₩10 trillion [around £2.7 billion], has been enveloped in a controversy, having plagiarised the design of some small- and medium-sized enterprises’ scarves. E-Land had promised to provide settlement money and incinerate the [plagiarised] items, but later changed its promise.

[Reporter] From the start of the second half of the year up until this month E-Land has been selling this scarf. However, this design, released a year ago by a smaller business, has almost exactly the same design.

[Representative of the specialist scarf company]: “The length, the width, the position of the stripes, and the size of the stripes, and the composition of the fibres – it’s all exactly the same.” The specialist manufacturer’s version costs ₩68,000 [£37.50], reflecting its development costs, while E-Land’s version sells for ₩23,900 [£13.20] – a third of the price. The [smaller] company’s annual sales of ₩200 million have taken a big hit.

[Representative of the specialist scarf company]: “It’s been very mentally stressful with retail and wholesale account customers ringing up complaining that the exact same product as their expensive scarf is on sale [for a cheaper price].” As soon as the smaller company complained E-Land sent a notice of agreement [합의안 = notice of compliance, perhaps?]. [E-Land] gave a settlement of ₩5 million [£2,700] and undertook not to violate [the smaller company’s] intellectual property rights again, and to remove from sale and burn all of the problem items.

However later, E-Land’s attitude changed.

[E-Land manager]: “If one looks at the photos, one can see that this scarf [designed by the smaller company] is awfully similar to a lot of other scarves from other brands.”

The controversy continues to engulf E-Land.

Analysis: This news piece highlights the curious disregard for intellectual copyright in Korea. Plagiarism is rampant in all spheres of commercial life – perhaps a legacy of the rote memorisation and subordination of creative endeavour which characterises Korean education. In recent years commercial plagiarism has been challenged more often as Koreans seek to protect their own innovations at home and abroad; to give a recent example an actress has been sharply criticised for copying a fashion designer’s work and passing it off as her own, and K-pop acts are constantly being accused of ripping off other people’s work. Many Koreans are anxious to move away from any perception of their country as one which churns out low-quality imitations.

(The fact that the complaining smaller company is not named in the report may be related to Korea’s idiosyncratic libel laws – even if your accusation is true, it can still be prosecuted as libel if it causes material harm to the entity who is the subject of the accusation. These laws were crafted for use as weapons by dictatorial administrations, but have never been repealed, possibly because they offer innate advantages to powerful and wealthy organisations.)