My Holidays in Saigon Changed My Perspectives on Vietnamese Community

I visited my fatherland (Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City) during this lunar year. I had some interesting findings there.

1-I am trying to call HCMC as Saigon because HCMC might defame the people in Saigon. (Just for those who do not know the difference between Saigon and HCMC, Saigon was a name of HCMC before the Vietnam became one country in 1970s.) But people there actually call Saigon as HCMC, and my dad told me that people now would not care much about whether we call Saigon as HCMC or Saigon. This fact told me that there is now better integration of North and South Vietnam because people try to follow the name called by the current Vietnamese government.

2-The flag of Vietnam, as you may know, contains a big yellow star and red background, both of which obviously represent socialism. I thought Saigon (I still call Saigon to show some respect even if people there may not care.) did not want to put up the Vietnamese flags, but I saw many houses there putting up the Vietnamese flags. That scenery of houses with many Vietnamese flags told me that people now feel they are a part of Vietnam and not South Vietnam.

I have visited Saigon for many times, but this time was a bit more interesting as I tried to see Saigon with lenses that I had never tried to put on. :)

Chaebol and Economic Disparity

Chaebol is a term to describe  South Korean large conglomerate. As some of you may know, the economy of South Korea largely depends on Chaebol as the top 10 large multinational corporations take up 75% of GDP in South Korea.

But I just learnt that the 90% of employees are taken up by small and medium-sized businesses, and yet the rest of the 10% (Chaebol) dominate the GDP share in South Korea. This certainly tells us about economic disparity. Workers at small and medium-sized businesses do not economically benefit as much as those at large corporations do.

From the South Korean national government`s perspective, however, it cannot easily give a solution for the economic marginalization. These South Korean multinationals lead the economy of South Korea and yet their existence cannot support the employment in South Korea. Thus, the government needs to consider benefit and loss for each conflicting groups and take a policy which allows both to benefit to some extent (win-win solution!).

Still, to me, ensuring the equity within the country would be relatively more important than allowing small portion of people to dominate the country.

The Way a Product is Advertised Tells a Typical Lifestyle in Your Country.

(It's been a while since I posted on this blog last time. I had a busy mock examination for two weeks, but I will keep writing this blog as long as I can!)

I walked down the street in Hanoi, Vietnam to get to my favorite coffee shop. And I suddenly came across with bunch of motorbikes with advertisements on their back seats. Since then, I was thinking that the most effective advertisement would be different because it is largely based on a typical lifestyle in your country.

In Japan, the most popular and convenient transport is a train; thus, I see a large number of advertisements wherever you walk within the stations. In the United States when I visited 2 years ago, I did not see as many advertisements as I did in Japan. Instead, I still receive so many ads from American businesses via e-mail, probably because the internet access rate in the United States is significantly high. In Vietnam, needless to say, motorbikes are vital transports for majority of Vietnamese people, so there is no wonder why I saw the motorbikes with advertisements on the street.

Now, how are products advertised in your country?