If You're an English Teacher in Korea, Next Time You See A Russian, Say "Thanks"
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 10:06 PM If there has been one place over the last year, for English teachers to point at and say they are being unnecessarily maligned, it has been The Korea Times.
Dodgy statistics, misquotes and other, possibly nefarious, deeds from self styled "best reporters" have seen the daily English paper with a circulation of upward of 2 million copies monthly, become a target of ridicule from the expat community especially for basically not reporting the truth.
You'll remember that the K-Times has also had a bit of a rough history with its syndication of a certain editorial cartoonist out of Thailand, who, on a number of occasions, has pushed the boundaries of good taste. It would seem that this time both the cartoonist and the Korea Times went a wee bit too far and have raised the hackles of The Russian community in Korea, and Russia as a whole:
The administration of The Korea Times, an influential newspaper published in the English language has been fired after the paper published disgusting cartoons mocking the victims of the recent terrorist attacks in the Moscow metro. The publishers fired chief editors of the newspaper after the publication of the second cartoon.
♫Ding Dong The Witch is Dead?♬
The cartoons are in pretty ad taste. The first and by far the worst is no longer online but the second one can be found here, along with various reactions by Russian readers both in English and in Russian. (Though it has to be said some of the reactions are just as ill advised).
Interestingly the Pravda piece above adds some useful insight which is worth repeating:
“This style of illustrations in South Korean newspapers is not rare. From time to tine the Korean newspapers publish specific cartoons on various disasters in third world countries. The newspaper published the column with the brown bear cartoon on April 2, when Moscow opened a large-scale festival of Korean culture to mark the 20th anniversary since the beginning of the Russian-Korean diplomatic ties. The burning feeling of national pride is very typical of the Koreans. This feeling comes close to a very painful reaction to any similar attacks against Korea,”
You don't say...
About 200 people were injured in a terrorist act in the subway of the city of Daegu (S.Korea) when a mentally unbalanced individual set a carriage on fire in February 2003. About 200 people were injured in the accident. If a Russian newspaper published a cartoon on the subject, the South Korean government would never leave it out of its attention.
You can imagine the "netizen" vitriol can't you if that were to have happened.
The recent Metro attacks in Moscow were terrible and here's hoping that the new K-Times editorial team sees it's way to discontinuing the use of this particular cartoonist's works.
However, I believe this situation presents a unique opportunity to expats in Korea (and those outside of Korea who maintain an interest *cough* Brian) to start petitioning the Korea Times the next instant something is quoted incorrectly, out of context or simply made up. Get out your pens keyboards the next time the likes of reporter Kang Shin-who write the sort of libelous rubbish he has been spouting for years and write to this new editorial team.
In fact write to the publisher. It seems that they are more than willing to turf out onto the street individuals who go about pissing off certain sectors of the community, and I put to you that threats to boycott the Korea Times to the Publisher will not fall on the same deaf ears of those of the editor and his ilk.
This is the kind of opportunity that doesn't come about to often and I would encourage anyone, but especially those in the English Language portion of K-Blogland, many of whom are much better at stating these things than I am, to have a go - who know what's going to come from it this time round, all things considered etc etc.
And so, if you're an English teacher in Korea, the next time you see a Russian person, say thanks. In one fell swoop they have gone and done what we have been trying to do for ages. Lets see if we can't scoot in on their coat tails and affect some change beneficial to another group in the community.
Who knew they were so good at correcting the media aye!? Aye!? (I kid, I kid!)
(Via Joe in the email)
Reader Comments (11)
I wrote about this shortly after the cartoon appeared, and was surprised to see so many people jumping in to defend the KT.
Knowing the system here, do you think that they were really sacked? I've guessing that shifted (or promoted) is more likely.
Can someone explain to me why the editorial cartoons are in bad taste? In a nation where even the cops are represented officially by a red nosed cartoon character, I have to think cartoons are viewed differently in Korea.
Before we get too carried away, there's really nothing confirming anybody was fired. There's the word of two papers which look to be on the same level as the one they're bashing. No names were named, no details were released, and two "news" articles wer hardly objective. All we have out of Korea is our friend foolsdie saying there was reshuffling, but nothing about the cartoon fiasco.
Amusing that it took people outside of Korea to bring attention and get something---maybe---done, considering we IN KOREA have been bitching for years about the cartoons, the opinion page, the reporting, and the comments under the pages. But, I'm not sure we should be saying "thank you" to Russians. When I think of good taste in media, Russian newspapers don't come to mind, and Russia isnt exactly a model for tolerance and compassion.
I see what you're saying Brian, I just think if someone were to strike while the iron were hot as it were it might be a different kettle of fish. (to mangle two metaphors)
Stafford, why not bring this story---as well as the Kang Shin-who immigration investigation---to Tatter and get Koreans aware of what's going on with Korea's "English"-language media? I planned to send a message to her myself, but maybe a couple messages might do the trick.
We'll have to wait and see if anything else happens at the Times, or indeed if anything happened in the first place, as again all we h ave to go on are two kind of crappy articles in a Russian English-language news site.
@Brian
Hmmmmm, I can't speak for the others involved in the Tatter&Media / Nanoomi project but I personally have a few misgivings about bringing this out over there.
First off my "beat" there is technology which of course this doesn't really fall under, but secondly and more to the point, I feel, is that Nanoomi needs to sort of earn the trust of it's Korean audience first. (Well it actually needs to earn an audience full stop seeing as it's still in beta)
That's my feeling. However someone who is covering life in Korea and who is infinitely more eloquent than myself might be better placed to push it over at Nanoomi.
Thank a Russian? I don't think so.
I wrote a very long post on this, but in a nutshell (and this will save you some time), Monsieur Peray should have been dismissed for doing his job badly, not for doing it controversially.
This is not a cause for celebration. It is especially troubling that the KT bent to the will of Russia.
Anyway, Monsieur Peray just responded to my email, which I reprinted here.
@Kushibo,
Again my issue is not the cartoonist himself, though I have taken exception to some of his past work. Rather with change afoot over at the KT it might be the right time for someone to point out the fact that it is not just their choice of cartoonist, but also how they cover foreigners in Korea, that could do with a change.
You'll note too that Pravda has a bit of a history bucking the party line in Russia and is not adverse to highlighting the deaths, under suspicious circumstances, of reporters like Anna Politkovskaya.
Monsieur Peray has written me a second email, telling me "nobody was fired at the Korea Times."
And you'll have to pass some of this information along yourself to Hub of Sparkle, since I'm banned from there. :)