Thursday 27 November 2008

By Damaging Korea's Image Overseas, Reuters and BBC Show They Don't Understand Korean Culture


Guest editorial by this guy.

I am just fu¢king fed with international news sources covering nothing but negative news from Korea.  Once again, rather than reporting glowingly about the beauty of Korea's Autumn colors, or the good character of our pop stars, donating money to charity anonymously, or publishing long lists of statistics about Samsung Phone performance specs, those goddamn journalists seem to be looking for nothing but damning, ugly, vile news to report about the beloved motherland.

Little-known news agency Reuters, anti-Korean propaganda mill "The Drudge Report", and hate-literature publisher BBC are up to their old tricks again, by reporting the news that Korean prosecutors are trying to enforce the old law against adultery by sending Ok So-ri to jail for boinking whomever she pleases; however, they did not balance out this portrait of Korea with descriptions of our beautiful landscape, praise for the Korean economic miracle of the 1970s and 1980s, or any mention of our success at the 2002 World Cup, or our beautiful Dok Islands.  I find this kind of unbalanced reporting inexcusable, and intend to call Reuters to task with a strongly worded letter to their ombudsman.  I suspect that we will discover, upon further investigation, that this news story was "leaked" to Reuters through dirty Chinese, as part of their international smear campaign meant to damage Korea's reputation internationally, in order to steal Baekdu Mountain from us, or simply another case of those two-faced Japanese showing their naked imperial aggression through propaganda.

Yes, some of Korea's detractors will say that "Wait!  This news is true!  How can you be upset that a News Agency reports the truth?"  And I would say, "It is also true that Korea has a 5000 year old culture, an ancient culture with deep family values, and that we have accomplished amazing things in the last fifty years, and Lee Hyori is hot, and kimchi and dog stew have made Korean men the most virile specimens of manhood in the world of men dependent on aphrodisiacs to get it up through the soju-induced alcohol haze. . . why are THESE things not reported as well?"  And what would my detractors say to that?  You should understand our culture more!

Some have said the best way to stop news agencies from reporting embarrassing stories like this about Korea is to establish a system of true social justice, to overhaul the judicial and educational institutions in Korea, eliminate human trafficking and corruption in our cities and positions of power, and reduce corporations' power to lobby for government favors through bribes; to them I just say, "Jesus, that sounds fu¢king hard.  Can't we just hide the bad stuff instead?"

On the bright side, international news agencies have not yet caught wind of this story and with luck, the great country of South Korea, that fortress of justice, democracy, and social advancement, will not be embarrassed by such dirty smears on our reputation.

2 comments:

Brian said...

You know, I think that's something about 92% of my coworkers would write.

Mark Eaton said...

...and the other 8% too busy with "this story" (or something along those lines) to actually realize these issues really do matter...