The first Korean TV series arrived in Vietnam more than 10 years ago, when Po Loong Huan of A Tieng Commune in Quang Nam Province, was a junior high student.
The district had yet to be connected to power then and Huan was among the few who were able to watch the 1996 series “First Love” as he was attending boarding school in the lowlands.
He was so interested in the love triangle between the brothers Sung Chan Woo and Sung Chan Hyuk with the same woman that he bamboozled local officials by naming his daughter Po Loong Chan Woo and his son Po Loong Chan Hyuk on their birth certificates.
“My wife also likes Korean films very much and when I told her about ‘First Love,’ she agreed right away that the names were beautiful,” Huan said, adding that his father wasn’t happy with the names.
Hyuk is now six years old and more people in the district have followed suit.
“Everyone here loves watching Korean TV,” said the commune stationary officer and creator of the new trend for kids’ names.
Huan said he’d named his children that way because he’s addicted to the Korean TV series and because those names were different from other children’s names in the area.
Many children in the village have similar names from the Co Tu traditional language, he said.
It has become a fashion for young Korean TV-loving couples to name their children half Co Tu and half Korean.
Names like Alang Thi Na Ra after the famous Korean singer and actress Jang Nara, Bling Rain after Bi Rain and Bling Giang Gun after actor and musician Jang Dong-gun, are all listed in the commune birth certificate record.
Zo Ram Bon, mother of Bling Giang Gun, said her husband intended to name their son Linh, “But that’s too normal. So we decided to name him after the handsome actor Jang Donggun who we both like.”
Bling Hong, the father of Bling Rain, said “I just think the name is beautiful. Anyway, there are a lot of people doing the same as we did.”
Zo Ram Thi Hong, another resident of the commune, was pregnant with her first daughter when she watched the film “Cinderella” in 2006. Hong so admired the main character Sora that she gave her daughter the name.
There’s a joke in the neighborhood that little Korean TV stars can be found anywhere in the commune, especially since last year.
Bhriu Liec, chairman of Tay Giang District, said there’s no law forcing people to name their children this way or that. “So we can only encourage locals to name their kids the traditional way to preserve our culture.”
As Korean films have affected the naming culture of Co Tu community in the district, Nguyen Huu Sang, head of the district communist party unit, expressed concern that he doesn’t know how far Korean TV would change other cultural traits of the people.
Most houses in Tay Giang District are decorated with a poster or two of South Korean actors or actresses.
Topic: Power of TV: minority kids named after Korean soap stars (Read 1976 times)