For Americans living in South Korea… sometimes it’s the subtleties in our culture and law that we begin to miss. In some cases, it’s those subtleties that cause us to miss Korea – Today, it’s the former.
Imitations and copies are rampant. Why is Lotte brand a conglomerate? Because they’ve learned how to successfully steal ideas from other big and successful corporations. Lotte conglomerate is technically a Japanese corporation which began in Japan by a Japan-born Korean businessman. They make ‘EVERYTHING’.
Here are a couple examples of their thievery.
Juicy Fruit vs Juicy & Fresh
Gimme a break... Break me off a piece of that Kic-Ker bar!
Did you know that imitations have GRADES? The better the grade, the harder it is to distinguish from an original. In particular, women are obsessed with Loui Vouitton hand bags. Those ugly brown ones with the little symbols on it. Here’s a picture of one. You can see them everywhere in Korea – and often times, sitting on a public transport, you can see two or more.
Original Louis Vuitton hand bag
And as an aside, just to tie this example to Lotte… no, I don’t think Lotte officially copies and sells this hand bag – BUT – I have heard that people can buy different grade imitations in Lotte department store.
To end this post with a word – I’ll say that I definitely appreciate laws in the US that protect businesses and ideas from scavengers, and thieves who are too unoriginal to come up with ideas for themselves so they have to pass other other businesses’ products off as their own. And please note that I want to differentiate between building off of and improving another’s ideas or designing a similar yet competing product. Those things are fair game. But imitating is pathetic and revealing.
