A couple of weeks ago, I received a phone call from a very distraught PR person. Her company had been in charge of handling an interview for us with Facebook Korea’s new chief executive, and she had a problem with our headline.

In it, we had quoted the CEO as saying that Facebook headquarters considers Korea a great test bed for new technology and trends.

This, she claimed, was far from the truth and wanted the headline to be altered because it belittles the local market.

I must admit, I was both angry and perplexed. Angry, because she had called late at night to claim something that was false since the chief executive had indeed made those remarks. And perplexed because despite her agitated explanations, I still couldn’t see what the big deal was.

Another issue she and her superiors raised about the story was parts that assumed Facebook was struggling for online endorsements. This, I could relate to because while rumors have been flying for quite a while about how Facebook Korea was having difficulty making ends meet and that it has been losing employees right and left, truth be told, there wasn’t concrete evidence.

Going back to the delicacy over Korea being called a test bed, I couldn’t help thinking more about it.

How exactly is Korea recognized abroad? Are we, as we’d like to believe, really recognized as a “global IT powerhouse,” or are we really just a litmus sheet for all the companies wanting to enter and do business elsewhere in Asia?

My belief is that we are the latter, and that it’s not all bad.

Look at us. We are a tiny country located in a geopolitically disadvantaged area ― think Kim Jong-un ― and repeating the words of many before us, all we have is manpower, and that manpower is exactly the reason why we have become such a popular test bed.

Despite our limited resources, we constantly come up with new ideas and technologies, and that’s why we are able to tell when something will or won’t work.

On top of that, we are in general (not all of us, of course) hot-tempered and eager for new things to happen.

If we were not all this, what other use would we have for multinational companies around the world?

Whether Koreans like it or not, China is already at the center of the (Asian) world. Look at the news ― the global news not the Korean news ― and it’s all about China and what it wants and what it can do.

So, as a country that’s close to China and a slew of other less-advanced and smaller but bankable Asian countries, and as a country that can tell the good from the bad and is not afraid to say so, our biggest strength is that we are indeed a test bed.

My last word on this is that Facebook's headquarters was probably not even aware of all the fuss.

By Kim Ji-hyun, Business desk editor
(jemmie@heraldcorp.com)