Hi, I’m the new face of Korea,” jokes Charm Lee, director of the Korean Tourism Organization. The tall, smiling, obviously Western man is here as part of South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak’s trade contingent, and to announce the opening of a KTO branch office in Manila early next year.
Mr. Lee — a German who migrated to Korea in 1978 and became a citizen — is actually the first-ever non-Korean-born public official there. As head of KTO since 2009, he’s responsible for developing Korea’s tourism industry, which until now has been something of an afterthought.
Sure, plenty of Koreans visit the Philippines. Mr. Lee (his German name is Bernhard Quandt, which he said Koreans found “hard to pronounce” so he adopted the name “Charm,” which means “true” and “one who participates,” as well as the surname “Lee” when he became a citizen) notes 740,000 Koreans came here in 2010, with a million arrivals expected for this year. Filipino visitors to Korea number much lower — 300,000 or so — and a lot of those are sailors and migrant workers. But this ratio is changing, Lee hopes, because Korea has much to offer.
Foremost lately is the huge interest in K-Pop. This includes both pop groups and idols and the ubiquitous Korean drama phenomenon, which combined draws 10 percent of Korean’s 10 million tourists worldwide (that’s a million people, pretty substantial) to visit TV and movie studios, tour favorite Koreanovela sites and attend music performances. Says Lee: “In recent years, an amazingly modern, creative culture has arisen that produces Korean dramas which are popular everywhere, K-pop stars who are idols of people around the world.”
This guy should know: he was a very popular Koreanovela star himself in the ’90s, playing a character basically modeled on his own life: a German who comes to live in Korea and falls in love with the country, then wins over the family of a Korean girl and marries her. (Lee is married to a Korean, with two grown-up children studying in Germany.)
“It was the first time the marriage of a Korean and foreigner was shown on television in a positive light,” he says of the Korean soap. “Before, society was very conservative, in a way xenophobic, but this show for the first time showed that an international marriage was a possible choice. So it was a happy ending.” Now, a Korean marrying a foreigner hardly raises an eyebrow. The soap opera role made Lee quite famous: “In Korea, it’s hard for me to go incognito; almost everyone knows me.”
How he became a public official in a very traditional society is another story.
“I fell in love with Korea as soon as I arrived (in ’78),” Lee recalls. “I was fascinated, wanted to learn more. I learned the language, spoke it quite fluently after a year or so. It helped me to get into many activities, build many relationships. I started teaching at the Goethe Institute in Seoul. My professor was a colleague, he did educational programs on TV, so I taught German language to Koreans on TV for five years. This led to being on talk shows, whenever shows needed a foreigner who spoke Korean. So I built my own niche.”
He was a business consultant for Kia Motor Company and others, wrote business books, headed the German-Korean Chamber of Commerce. At the same time, he was also a colleague of future Korean president Lee Myung-Bak. “I was in the same Rotary Club as him, consulted for him when he was mayor of Seoul, helped him campaign for president. So he knew me very well. Even though I did not want a government office — I was making a good living as a business consultant — he asked me to become head of tourism in 2009.”
Part of his Manila mission is to announce the new KTO office opening here next year, which will promote his adopted country. He has a not-so-secret weapon: his outsider’s perspective. “For me, as an outsider, it is much easier to see what is attractive and beautiful about Korea, because those who grow up there start to think, ‘Well, it’s nothing special.’
“But it’s very attractive, because there’s a lot of philosophy behind it. It’s a philosophical country — for 1,000 years, it was ruled by philosopher kings, people trained in history and arts, not military rulers. These leaders held society together with a code of morals, not by force or violence. So it’s a unique culture with an attractive inner, spiritual tradition that is very inspiring.
“Also,” he continues, “it is a country with a vibrant energy — it has a great concentration of vitality, an amazing power that enables Koreans to do all these things — you find it in the mountains, in the country, in the food, the culture. It’s a primal power, but also an enthusiastic energy — like seven million people cheering in the streets at the 2002 World Cup victory.”
On the other hand, we couldn’t help wondering why Koreans are so crazy about the Philippines. “Number one is the weather,” Lee tells us. “In Korea, we have four seasons, but to relax on a vacation, the beach locations here are very welcoming.
“Also Philippine society is very open and friendly to the visitor, which is a big attraction. Then also the English language: Koreans are very keen on improving their English, that’s why so many students come here to learn the language at a reasonable price. That’s another factor: cost. It’s quite affordable for Asian countries to visit.”
Korea’s rise is an Asian success story, one that the Philippines would do well to study and learn from. Considered “hopeless” by Western visitors a century ago, the country sent many of its citizens abroad to work, just like OFWs here. The difference is, most of the earned money came back to Korea in the form of taxes that paid for the construction of infrastructure and ports; the returning money also spurred the economy. By the 1960s, the Philippines’ GDP was four times that of Korea’s; today, Korea’s GDP is 10 times that of the Philippines.
To hear Lee talk about his adopted country (he cheerily refers to Korea as the “Switzerland in Asia,” with its mountains, skiing, relatively high cost of living, yet competitive tourism industry), you wonder if hiring a foreigner to trumpet your local strengths isn’t such a bad idea. Certainly, the Philippines could use a bit more of a push than someone simply telling Pinoys to “create a buzz” about their home country. It requires a bit more central planning and vision than that. Maybe it requires a new face.