South Korea + more things

South Korea soft power

This presentation on South Korea was done before Squid Game took off on Netflix. South Korea can enhance and leverage its soft power in fields such as K-pop, soap operas, movies, video games, contemporary art, sports, education, business, and technology. Geography dealt Korea a poor hand as it historically has been invaded by China and by Japan. South Korea now has the economic and cultural resources to produce significant soft power, allowing it to design a foreign policy that will give it a larger role in global governance. South Korea today has an unparalleled opportunity to expand its international influence in ways that would have been unimaginable just a generation ago. Scholars, journalists, authors, industry leaders and other leading experts join us for sessions to raise the level of understanding of South Korea’s soft power and analyze the role of soft power in the context of U.S.- ROK alliance while offering suggestions for how Korean soft power can be used to broaden and strengthen the alliance.

Rush Doshi

Rush Doshi, former director of the Brookings China Strategy Initiative and a former fellow in Brookings Foreign Policy, and Michael O’Hanlon, director of research in Brookings Foreign Policy, followed by a panel discussion with experts who focused on analysis concerning the U.S.-China relationship and China’s grand strategy. This was to mark the launch of Doshi’s book The Long Game.

Dasani UK case study

One of the first posts I wrote on this blog was about Dasani which was in reaction to one of the stories that run about the brand in the media. Dasani is a bottled water brand owned by Coca-Cola; it is similar to Watson’s Water in Hong Kong and Singapore. It is processed and purified, rather than being a natural spring water. Tom Scott does a complete run down of the history of Dasani in the UK.

Shanghai Animated Film Studio

Shanghai Animated Film Studio has made films from world war two to the present day. The golden age for the studio was between the 1950s when they experimented with films using Chinese art techniques to the cultural revolution. Havoc in Heaven draws on Peking Opera.