Commemorating Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Cheil Worldwide and Korean personal care brand Kundal launched "The Pink Glove" campaign which includes a breast self-exam kit inspired by Korea's bathing culture. It’s designed to raise awareness about the importance of regular breast self-checks.    

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women globally and in Korea. The number of breast cancer patients has doubled during the past 10 years in the country, and Korea has the highest breast cancer occurrence rate in East Asia.  

But according to the companies, Koreans have little understanding of breast self-examinations largely because of cultural taboos about discussing women’s bodies and health.    

Enter the Pink Glove campaign with a solution to raise awareness and promote regular breast self-examination among Korean women.   

Korea’s Ttaemiri culture (scrubbing the outermost layer of skin) is ubiquitous, and the most commonly used bath product found in households and public bathhouses is a pink-colored scrubbing glove.   

The campaign positions the glove as the most effective tool for regular breast self-examination.    

For the self-exam kit, specially produced versions of the glove feature Illustrations and descriptions explaining how to do a breast self-examination, made in consultation with the Korean Breast Cancer Society. In addition to the glove, the kit includes an instruction card, and additional body care products.    

To further amplify the campaign, a partnership was created with public bathhouses nationwide to educate professional body scrubbers and masseuses on how to conduct breast self-exams since they often discover breast cancer as they scrub and massage people.   

The campaign will run for two months via Kundal's website and offline channels. It launched on World Breast Cancer Day (Oct. 19) and there has been huge demand nationwide for the self-exam kits.