Globalization and Affective Economy of Othering in South Korea: Emotional Particularism in Orion Choco Pie Advertisements

Abstract

© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.This essay explores the affective economy of othering within globalization encounters by analyzing representations of foreign others in domestic advertisements for a globally bestselling South Korean snack cake. For three decades, domestic advertisements for Orion Choco Pie have thematized chŏng, a time-nurtured affective connection that blurs boundaries between self and other. The essay examines how the advertisements balance the representations of chŏng as uniquely Korean and inaccessible to outsiders, yet directly responsible for the treats international popularity. I detail how emotional particularism–affective-discursive constructions of indigenous sentiments that underscore their uniqueness and incommensurability–functions not only as a tool of ethno-nationalist self-fashioning but also of othering, while my analysis also contributes to critiquing the neoimperialist undercurrents of post-Cold-War globalization as it plays out away from the old imperial centers. I argue that the advertisements affective economy recruits the South Korean public to identify with globalizing South Korean capital and mediates a subimperialist desire for South Korean hegemony.