i guess i was mistaken about the mario commercial… the one i was thinking of was a hilarious zelda commercial that is very similar in style:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fKSZE-3grPg

it could still be japanese in origin… i can’t imagine nintendo staging and filming a mario-themed thriller-esque danceoff in korea! that’s a party i’d like to be invited to.

^^

The article is fantastic, and your explaination makes sense. I knew of the law prohibiting the importation of Japanese culture, which I believe was still in effect up until 2003…or perhaps that was just for Japanese television programs. Anyhow you say that the last one is a dubbed Japanese commercial. Do you have a link to that I could check out?

hyundai was nintendo-licensed for a while, so the 컴보이 and the 슈퍼 컴보이 were all that korea knew of nintendo products. koreans generally don’t know what “nintendo” is or means. i can’t really get the story straight, but there was some sort of law in korea until about 1997 prohibiting the importation of japanese cultural products. console gaming is practically nonexistent in korea to this day due to that law. i believe that is also why nintendo chose to go through hyundai to get into the korean market. nothing they tried in korea ever really worked, though. the previous president of nintendo (until about 2001, i think), hiroshi yamauchi, apparently didn’t care about korea at all. now the new president, satoru iwata, is trying to get things going again by starting a true korean subsidiary of nintendo. but it’s a terrible uphill battle against the pc culture and piracy, and i don’t predict they will have much immediate success.

for more, here’s a decent article:
http://www.4colorrebellion.com/archives/2006/09/06/playing-nintendo-v24-korea-needs-a-reggie-lution/