The poster of the tour found in HKU
How grateful I am for the new term beginning here at Hong Kong University. New courses, new friends and most importantly a fantastic upcoming opportunity I have been organising for sometime now with the British tour company Lupine Travel. We have worked together to arrange a unique tour to North Korea set in the upcoming reading week of the semester in March, providing a once opportunity for many students to experience one of the world's most secretive, isolated and unique countries. Having first visited North Korea myself in 2014, I realized strongly just how valuable this learning experience can be to people, hence the birth of "Visit North Korea" and my subsequent efforts to promote it.
So we organized the tour dates, I started off promoting it online through HKU, it got some interest, but we knew later on to draw even more interest and attention a ground campaign was needed. This would begin in the form of posters. First of all, to save money (fearing the costs of professional printing stores), I had this idea of printing A4 "small" colour posters out. I done so, Before my new years trip to Hanoi, Vietnam, I devoted an enormous amount of energy to putting these "posters" throughout campus. I managed about 15 to begin with, all at very visible locations. Off to Vietnam I went in the hope that as the new semester drew in Dylan (Lupine Travel's director) would get loads of enquiries from curious students... Not quite.
I came back from Vietnam the next week to discover that there had been no new enquiries, and somehow, no posters. It baffled me to see that the vast majority of the posters I had put up (on designated free spaces designed for such) had vanished. They had been took down or rudely posted over by someone else. I wasn't going to let that stop me. Off I went again, this time I printed out 18. I promptly replaced the ones that had vanished and posted more in some new locations "this time, this time!" so I thought.
The short lived A4 posters.
Was I right? No. This time it was even worse. As the new term started I found that less than 24 hours, the same thing had happened! More than half the posters had been posted over by other people, I even caught a couple in the act doing so, politely telling them not to. I was astounded. These "A4 posters" weren't working, in either recongition or response. Perhaps because they were small people were seeing them as easy game to post over, or it just seems the student culture finds that sort thing acceptable, I'll mention no more than that... I was faced with a dilemma, I did not have the time nor the money in the long run to endlessly reprint and replace posters. There had to be a better way.
There was. I not long after discovered there was a very cheap on-campus printing shop, which offered colour photocopying in all sizes and all for much less than what I was paying to print the A4 colour ones. Soon, the A4 mini design was translated into a A3 beast design. It was time for round three (or A3). So here I went again, trailing round campus with rigor and determination putting up the new "bigger" posters. With past experience, I quickly learnt to identify the areas where posters were getting posted over and those where they were not (formal noticeboards and window posting spaces). So, 29 posters later, I was shattered. However, it worked. Unlike the first two sets of posters, people began responding to them, expressing interest to me as I put them up and asking questions. At last!
Now, let's hope they survive. One tiny downer was that one of the A3 posters I placed in a less "secure" area had managed to be posted over with something in a mere 20 minutes of being posted... I really don't get what leads some of the other students to disrespect other people's content like that, but nonetheless, I soldier on. I am driven by the belief and passion that these trips are capable of making a difference, by both helping promote a greater awareness of the issues concerning North Korea but also by promoting much needed engagement and exchanges between North Korea and the world, a way of building bridges, a way of building change and a way of achieving peace. Let's hope these "poster wars" don't continue and that the numbers for the March trip continue to rise!
