Licensing Blog

Welcome to our Licensing Blog, which takes a light hearted look at our mysterious world.

Seoul, kids at the show and kimchi(Posted: 28-07-2010)

I hate Heathrow airport and I like Germany. However, a 4 hour stopover at Frankfurt airport would test the patience of Job. There’s absolutely nothing to do! Not even a decent bar (to be fair, alcohol was available, but the surroundings left a lot to be desired). Anyway, Lufthansa got us to Seoul eventually where our hosts from the Seoul Character & Licensing Fair were waiting to greet us.

With the morning prior to the show free, we hopped on the Seoul underground to look for the Korean War Memorial. To our surprise it was a massive complex that not only commemorated the lives lost in that (largely forgotten) conflict, but also boasted a huge collection of military vehicles - I can tell you that a B52 bomber up close is rather imposing. Luckily we had just missed the official ceremony to welcome Hilary Clinton’s visit to the memorial, so avoided getting caught up in what I’m sure would have been very high-security. They were just rolling up the red carpets…

Hutos from the KBS – look familiar?                           Penguin and his 26 Celsius

On set up day any exhibition hall is always hot as the air-con never seems to be on until the show starts. However, some bright spark has recently passed an energy-saving law in Seoul to restrict the minimum temperature in public buildings and offices to 26⁰ C. Boy, was that hot. Annoying posters of a smiling penguin with a big 26 next to him were everywhere. On the first public day there were nearly 30 thousand visitors through the door, which made the heat seem even worse. This being our second year here, we were prepared to get all our business done on the first 3 days and then have Korean kids practising their English on us for the weekend.

I was accosted at the show by a female Kiwi journalist who was based in Seoul, who told me that she always liked to meet foreigners. I took great pleasure in pointing out that I was not in fact foreign, but was English. Before I knew it, I’d been interviewed and quoted on the Korean IT Times website – fame at last. She later emailed me to tell me about an interesting interview she’d had with an exhibitor at another show being held at the venue. As the show was the 30^th Annual Conference on the Physics of Semiconductors you can draw your own conclusion.

The evening receptions organised by the show, the Seoul Promotion Plan and the Seoul Business Agency were much appreciated and great fun. Not too much of the kimchi (fermented cabbage!) but lots of ginseng chicken soup. Our tour guide, Joy, constantly fought against talking on the coach and kept quizzing us on what she’d been saying to see if we had been listening. Once off the coach she buzzed round like a mother hen, shepherding the group and setting meeting points and times that we dared not miss for fear of ruining her schedule. Her frequent jokes were made funnier by the immediate explanation that it had been a joke. Apparently Joy had been told that she should be a stand-up comic – please keep the day job!

Evening market visits (at which I couldn’t resist having sausage-and-chips-on-a-stick, although it tasted as bad as it looked) and Korean barbeque meals behind us, the trip was rounded off by a much-welcomed upgrade to business class for the flight home – what a result! See you again next year Seoul.