For this term, I have a class called Global Experience in Arts and Design whereby we have propose a overseas trip to explore further the future career of our choice. While I have made up my mind to work in digital marketing, I realised then I hadn’t thought of which industry I would be interested in. So far, I worked on various types of industries for my assignments and I’m perfectly fine with most. If I had to choose one, it would probably be the beauty industry because I’m pretty familiar with it. I already have an existing interest in beauty anyway, thanks to avid appearance hyperfixations in my teenage years and having interned in a beauty platform. 

 

When I think of beauty industry, two places in Asia come to mind: Korea and Thailand. Korea’s an obvious choice because it has a chokehold on the beauty industry, even on a global level. Based on my understanding, Thailand has a pretty healthy fashion and beauty scene, which made it a pretty appealing choice. Practicality-wise, Thailand was a much better option as the group I was travelling with comprised of different nationalities and Thailand had already relaxed their Covid restrictions. Korea, on the other hand, was comparatively more expensive and complicated to travel to; they still had mandatory PCR tests and their visa process would be pretty extensive for the rest of my group.

 

At this point, I was honestly more inclined toward the less complicated option. However, I still had to factor in my future career. This should have been an obvious first priority, but Covid presented a more imminent issue at hand, so it was kind of pushed to second priority for a bit. When I thought about it, digital marketing is mainly about the online world, especially as I wanted to work with social media. The globalised internet culture is ruled by a select few cultural leaders, which Korea is definitely a part of. The K-Wave is big in Asia especially, which makes up more than half the world’s population. Essentially, if all the countries in Asia were categorised on the Cafeteria Map from Mean Girls, Korea would be part of the Plastics (the joke writes itself). When people say you “look Korean” in Southeast Asia, they usually mean it as a compliment, a phenomenon I had always found interesting. 

 

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Getting to my point, in terms of culture Korea’s way ahead of Thailand. Thailand’s cultural influence is definitely growing as evidenced by the popularity of Pomelo and Thai stars trickling into the mainstream, but it’s nowhere near being as influential as Korea as of now and in the near future, which is why Korea is the country I picked to travel to.