<![CDATA[Capitalizing on the Hallyu wave, an Indonesian cosmetics company known as Scarlett Whitening changed their Instagram marketing strategy to focus on their South Korean brand ambassador, Song Joong Ki. This study is an attempt to address the research gaps on the semiotics of Korean-related media, considering that there are only a few studies on advertisements that have been influenced by the Korean craze. The data of this study are two Instagram advertisements of Scarlett Whitening that represented their change of strategy on September 2021. The data are analyzed using multimodal analysis to find out the three metafunctions of the advertisements, referring to Kress and Leeuwen’s social semiotics theory. Results showed that the representational meaning of both advertisements contained a strong narrative to invite readers to buy the product so that they can be closer to the South Korean actor, the interpersonal metafunction influenced consumers to believe that the human model is very familiar with the product, and the compositional metafunction highlighted the association between Song Joong Ki’s white skin, white clothes, white product with the brand’s name. However, the analysis also indicated an extreme spotlight on the South Korean actor and a stark neglect of the product in across the linguistic, visual and spatial semiotic systems. This study is significant in revealing a potentially concerning upcoming business marketing strategy that capitalizes on the popularity of Korean culture at the cost of neglecting the authenticity of their own products]]>
