Or: This is a public service message.
Last year I wrote about my inability to handle the barrage of signs in Seoul’s incredibly textual landscape; I was both unable to cope with the stimulation and unable to appreciate the way signs functioned in a visual navigation of the landscape.
Perhaps my capacity for visual stimulation has increased or my Korean has improved. In any case I’ve spent the past few weeks ruminating, not on signs which function as labels (“tow-away zone,” “subway entrance,” “air raid shelter,” etc.) but on public service messages. Public service messages address some imagined member of the public and their purpose is to instruct or inform. So as I struggled to read the signs (literally) I was also imagining ways to read the presence, the power, and the necessity of the signs at this moment in time. As I took surreptitious and not so surreptitious shots in the bus and subway I thought, “A future historian or anthropologist will thank me for this.” Either that or they’ll think I’m off my rocker and spinning wild and unsubstantiated theories because I’m bored during my morning commute. I’m OK either way.
“It’s about time, let’s follow the traffic rules!” (*my rough translation) These signs, courtesy of the Seoul District Police have begun cropping up all over the place; this one is at the crosswalk of the large intersection by my apartment. The sign doesn’t specify which rules people should try to follow or even which ones they are breaking, but in its vagueness it is panoptic and all-accusing. The other crosswalk sign is more educational; it says, “Let’s stand, let’s look, let’s go. Let’s not jaywalk!” Signs like these make visible the disjuncture between normative behavior and notions of the ideal citizen. Obviously, in real life, people don’t follow the rules (I can attest to that). But a sign like this can only exist in the small time period when people are aware of the rules but don’t feel compelled to follow them, yet somehow just the phrase “Let’s follow the rules!” (without accompanying enforcement) has a power of its own. Conveniently, this is exactly where we are now — ten years ago running red lights, ignoring lane markers, and parking where you pleased was the norm, and if you attempted to follow the rules people would probably laugh or curse at you for being inefficient. But recently this idea of following the rules has gained some prestige. In the past few months newspaper articles have explored and deplored the great inconsistencies of Korea that make it a hard place for foreigners to live: rules vary from one bank branch to another and one teller to another, street signs follow different systems of Romanization, everyone is required to have a state ID number to do everything from purchase a cell phone and reserve movie tickets online but the ones issued to foreigners often don’t work. The articles ask, if rules and procedures aren’t standards within the country, how can Korea expect to complete internationally and be attractive to tourists and foreign investors?
Would it be too much to link “following the rules” with some notion of First World, civilized status and an environment in which the topography of rules is smooth and regular, like clockwork? Where citizens stand patiently in line, don’t piss in the bushes off the side of the road, and don’t park on the side of the road to take a nap? In the 70s and 80s the focus may have been on catching the First World economically, but I wonder if the sense of First World distance/difference is now less economic and more cultural. I think that in some humanities-rich future, anthropologists and historians will read public service messages like these to measure not only the gap between behavior and imagined ideal but also to look at how industrializing nations imagine their future First World status.
I suppose one could make a clearer case for an imagined foreign gaze by looking at public service messages put out by
Hi Seoul (slogan: Soul of Asia), the Seoul “brand” that promotes Seoul to the rest of the world.

This sign, from the bus, says “Clean and healthy ‘Non-Smoking Seoul’” and “[We?] won’t forgive second-hand smoke anymore.” In Korean you can conveniently leave out subjects and objects so it isn’t clear WHO isn’t forgiving — the baby? Citizens? Or “Hi Seoul”? (You can see the logo in the corner.) This sign visually pairs a public health message with one about Seoul’s viability as a international destination. I think there’s a performative aspect to public service messages; the message is important but having the ads also parades the effort that Seoul is going through to make this city pleasing to tourists. Tourists (and even Koreans themselves) may not study the statistical drop in public smoking or even feel the gradual decrease but they may take the sign as evidence that change is occurring. The ad campaign (even just the idea of a campaign) both creates and affirms that feeling.
The next two signs are from the subway, courtesy of Seoul Metro. The first says, “The cultured citizen obeys the rules for taking a train,” and shows a boy jumping the turnstile instead of paying for his ride. The second asks, “Are there manners on the subway too?” and, in the smaller pictures on the bottom, instruct, “No food on the train,” “Let passengers off before boarding,” “Fold the newspaper in half and don’t spread your legs,” “Play music quietly,” “Leave free seats for the elderly and handicapped,” “Don’t lie on the seats or run,” “Put your phone on vibrate and talk quietly,” etc.
The notion of the cultured or enlightened citizen has a history of its own, going back to at least the colonial period, but I’m not really the right person to take that on. The relationship between changing modes of transportation and changing etiquette norms is another large and wormy topic. Without delving too deeply into either of those topics I suppose that this sign tells us something about the process for creating standards of public behavior — too what extent are those standards created, purposefully, by government bodies and to what extent are they created in random or cumulative acts by people? The
Dog Poop Girl incident was public-driven and effective — I don’t think anyone would try to get away with letting their dog shit in the subway again. But signs like these make me curious about the relationship between government bodies and citizen’s bodies. What gives the government power, in this case, to educate public manners? Would we have to look back to government
propaganda from the 60s and 70s to understand why a sign like these doesn’t make people upset? Or even further, to the Confucian idea that a government provides moral guidance? And what is the limit of the government’s ability to educate? I don’t think Americans would have any problem with the gate-jumping part of the sign, since gate-jumping is clearly breaking the rules. But would an American transportation agency feel able to put out a poster instructing riders to “Fold the newspaper in half and don’t spread your legs”? I’m guessing no.
This sign is from one of the revolving doors in Samsung Medical Center’s new Cancer Center, and it reads, “Three people in one slot.” Having seen the accidents that occur when too many people try to squeeze themselves into a revolving door at the last second I feel the need for this kind of message. People rush into the revolving doors, just as they rush to the front of the plane as soon as it lands, out of a trained sense of competition and efficiency — a sense that those few seconds really matter. But the hospital can’t post people at every revolving door, telling patients, “Just wait for the next slot! It’ll only take a few seconds! We don’t need any more injuries!” And as a public service message that is too long and perhaps the impulse has been around too long to reeducate in time. So some genius arrived at the number of three and put it on the door, short and sweet, and no more accidents (we hope). Fast forward ten or twenty years, and will my Just So Story end up as a civilization of messages like, “The drink you are about to enjoy is hot! Please sip with caution!” and “Turn off disposal before clearing”?
Perhaps I’ve had too much fun with these signs (you should see the ones I edited out!) but in the very least, I think we can read in them something about the gaps between actual and ideal behavior, and the relationship between government bodies and ideas of citizenship/citizenry. Next week I’ll continue this topic by looking at signs in my son’s elementary school and I’ll also fulfill my
long-overdue promise to peek at his textbook on “Correct Living.”
In the meantime I’d love to hear readers’ thoughts and examples of public service messages in the U.S. and elsewhere.
