TIL that Korean Broadcasting Law prevents commercials to be run mid-show. Rather than having multiple short commercial break to be run throughout the course of a program, the entirety of the show is played continuously and is followed by a longer commercial break period.

Ok, so this is an incredibly broad topic, because there are so many different forms of advertisement, not just in Korea, but everywhere in the world. Doing a short video about all that Korea has to offer in terms of advertisement is impossible, so we just talked about some of the things that stood out for us.

One of the things we didn’t mention, though, but we discussed with each other, was how cosmetics are marketed here. Now, I haven’t seen all of the cosmetic ads in both Canada and Korea, but for some reason I remember Canadian makeup ads seeming all scientific and stuff. People in lab coats with clipboards being like “we found the scientific formula to make you not have uglies” with chemical compounds silhouetted on the screen. The doctor is always a beautiful blonde girl with her hair in a bun with thin metal framed glasses. It’s all sciencey and stuff. In Korea, though, it seems like the cosmetics ads are more…nature based? Like “holy shit! I found this fresh fruit right off this tree! Let me crack this badboy in half and rub its insides on my face.” And they don’t even rub it on their face. They delicately dab their finger in it and then dab their face as well. Then they splash a boatload of water. So much splashes! But it’s so natural! Straight from Mother Nature! Is it just me? Maybe I remember ads differently:

Side note: we finished this video SO EARLY compared to our other videos. We usually film, edit, and publish TL;DRs on the same day. We thought this week, though, that we were going to be in Japan for the second part of our project….buuuuut it turns out that Japan is supposed to have another crazy storm happening the SAME DAY that we’re supposed to fly in. What is it with us and our bad luck for weather? I think Mother Nature is telling us to stay in Korea. Ha! Anyhow, we filmed this early so we can get this up before we went to Japan, and it turns out we didn’t need to film so early. Huzzah! We should be going NEXT week, though. I’m just afraid of mentioning that out loud in case Mother Nature reads this blog, which I doubt she does. I’m sure she has other cool stuff to read instead. I heard she was vegan. Just saying.

Another thing we didn’t mention that we find really interesting is TV advertisements. Namely, they’re not cutting the TV show into pieces all of the time. In Canada, it’s like, here’s 6 minutes of the TV show, and then here’s two minutes of ads, with another 6 minutes or so, and another 2 minutes of ads. In Korea, though, in an hour-long program, the show will air uninterrupted for its duration, 45 minutes or so, and then ads will be shown AFTERWARDS for 15 minutes or so. Isn’t that brilliant? Think about North American shows for a second, and how the show is edited with commercials in mind.

And the person….who will be leaving…MasterChef…today….is………….

….and the person….who will be leaving….MasterChef….today….is….

Oh man those shows are so terribly edited. Holy hell! I hate it so terribly. But the shows here in Korea aren’t edited with that evil-ness in mind. HOWEVER, because of the lack of commercials during the programming, you might notice a boatload of shameless product placements in the videos themselves. Excuse me: just let me hold this Pepsi with my fingertips as I show the logo for all to see. AH! That was so refreshing, wasn’t it?

Last thing I want to mention, going back to small business advertising: we feel this the most whenever we come back from Tokyo, but we really hate those inflatable balloons outside of restaurants and noraebangs on the sidewalks of Korea. If you’ve been here, you know what I’m talking about. So many shops have them. Big inflatable things eight feel tall saying “Noraebang here!” or “Salon here!” outside of all of the businesses. Walking on the sidewalk sometimes feels like a modern day slalom. It’s tacky. Tokyo doesn’t have it. I don’t think it’s particularly interesting, and it just makes the place look cheaper. Let me know if you agree.

Yeah! So that’s it for this week’s TL;DR. Let us know how things are in your country and if you noticed any differences when you were traveling elsewhere. Yay! But before we go, let’s leave you with this stellar piece of honest advertising:

Also, let us know what you thought of the ending of this week’s TL;DR. We feel like you guys leave some really great comments, and we’d like to include those in our videos in the future, where we can talk about them a bit, and just show our thanks for your engagement. If it was lame, umm, don’t be afraid to tell us. We can take it!

Otherwise, make sure you click on this pretty button down here, so we can share some more cool stuff with you for our FAVORITE section of the week. We love doing these TL;DRs. Thanks for watching them, guise!