The Difference between Japanese and Korean Advertising.

As I have previously posted, I was slightly disappointed in being unable to appreciate most of the Japanese advertising due to the language barrier. I got talking to a French guy in our Busan hostel, S.Korea, who works in web design around there and can speak a little of both Japanese and Korean. He was telling me how the Japanese value the use of good typography and copy writing within an advertisement, spending the majority of their creative time for an advertisement perfecting the layouts- hence why a lot of the ones I had viewed in Japan appeared largely copy based. In S.Korea however, he explained that they mainly value acting skills to deliver their message in television advertisements, but in a much more direct and honest tone than Western advertising. He gave me the example of L'Oreal advertising back home- over here, people wouldn't fall for the scientific babble, so in general a much more factual message is delivered to the target audience. Obviously I'm not sure how reliable this theory is and how extreme the differences are, as it may be a simple matter of opinion, but it was really interesting to hear his point of view and from what I've seen it definitely makes sense.