According to the above information, studying on how
Korean Wave has succeeded expanding to other countries might help Thailand, the authors‟ country of
origin, to promote its country to the outsiders and reduce the negative images of the country as well as
raise their economic status as the consequence.
For Thailand, the country is now facing many difficulties especially from the ongoing political crisis which
creates a very negative reputation on both insiders and outsiders (Thailand Tourism Organization, n.d.).
This factor also slows the growth of Thailand‟s economics as well along with an impact of the financial
crisis from the United States, the so called Hamburger crisis (Kongprasert, n.d.). The resolution of this
study might be useful for Thai government to imply for the country and this will benefit their citizens in
the future
2.1 The concepts of nation branding and culture as mentioned in the introduction part, South Korea
used a strategy on nation branding and culture as main tools to promote their country and change their
country’s image, so in this chapter, the concepts of nation branding and culture are clarified with regard
to let the readers understand more in-depth on how South Korea managed their nation branding and
promoted their culture.
Nation Branding
There are many scholars that have defined the concept of Nation Branding. In general, its definition is
close to the place branding or it can be defined as a special area of place branding. (Szondi, 2008) To
straighten out, the similarity is Nation branding, place branding and city branding are sharing the simple
meaning that the way of employing corporate branding techniques to countries (Lee, 2007) Moreover,
Nation branding can be referred to mere application of branding strategies and also can be used as a
tool for nation states. It also focuses on using marketing communication techniques and applying it with
branding in order to promote the nation image to other countries. (Szondi, 2008) The other concept of
Nation branding Dinnie has given is the blend of multi-dimensions of the elements that help the nations
offer their target audiences with cultural grounded the differentiation and relevance (Dinnie 2008,
p.15).
Culture
Culture is the significant factor in the international management area especially in the geopolitical
boundaries aspect which is a study of relationship among politics, geography, demography, and
economics resulted from the foreign policy. But this approach can be a problem whe