Electric Night

Originally Posted April 8, 2010


...electric night of a new Asia..." 

-- William Gibson, “New Rose Hotel” 

Korea is the embodiment of the postmodern. Image occludes -- and at times supersedes -- reality here. Branding hangs like fog in the very air you breathe. Lighted signs for Hyundai and SK and Lotte Mart and other titans of Korean industry burn bright in the darkness where they are suspended from plastic skyscrapers. A younger, more photoshopped version of Rick Deckard from "Blade Runner" would fit right in. Corporations get epically huge here -- Hyundai, for instance, is involved in steel production, manufacturing, construction, and textiles. And this is the rule rather than the exception. The local brands vie for supremacy with Western brands. Dunkin Donuts, Jack Daniels, Levis, and a hundered others are out in force here, too. Media is omnipresent, and seems very Westernized and very alien at the same time. Televised advertising is eye-poppingly cinematic. English is displayed constantly for show in advertising and packaging, but the phrases are often meaningless and absurd. Form overwhelms content. And the landscape is rife with the ironic and the incongruous. Everything new here seems to be made from ornamental brick or imitation wood. Crumbling plaster buildings with mildewed walls stand next door to gleaming glass-and-chrome highrises. The world's fastest internet is transmitted through a primeval countryside of forests and mountains. Hyperconsumerism and poverty lie cheek to jowl. Gleaming BMWs and Calvin Klein jeans stand right next to sunburnt farmers grubbing in the mud of their fields. Zoning is non-existent and rice paddies stand right next door to tall buildings. Almost nothing seems to have been constructed more than twenty years ago. Korea is a country with even less architectural past than the U.S. -- a place suffused with a vibe of ultrasaturated artificiality that you can't quite put into words, but which you feel always, like a weight pressing down on you.