Soft Toys, Hard Life: Living with Cuddly Fellow Citizens in South Korea
Cities are not just for human citizens, especially in South Korea. Cute corporate creatures casually walk on the busy streets, working, struggling, enjoying brief moments of happiness, and, otherwise, living the everyday among their fellow citizens. They assume the appearance of cutified and anthropomorphized animals, or, one might dare to say, that of stuffed animals. In other words, they are cute, cuddly and simple enough to be commodified and mass-produced into soft toys. Some will strongly disagree with my decision to compare these creatures with traditional soft toys. However, it is still important to notice that they usually materialize in the form of an actor or a person wearing the animal costume. Also, this costume itself is called inhyeongtal in Korean, which roughly translates into ‘stuffed animal/dolly mask’, hinting at the inherent relationship between these creatures and soft toys.
But they are not just corporate make-believes or animated soft toys with mysterious sweaty part-timers inside. It is amazing how human these creatures have become in Korea, maybe more human than humans. In February 2019, Esquire Korea published an interview with Ryan, a fictional character created by a mobile messenger application company, Kakao. The interview featured him as an “iconic figure of Seoul” and had him pose for a…
