The Unmentioned Social Problem

Yeah, there are a lot of different issues Korea's working on these days.

Many of you expats may have noticed the Chosun Ilbo just hired a member of Anti-English spectrum as an intern...

but here's one issue that doesn't get much airtime, but if you start noticing it, it's an absofreakinglute outrage.



Nobody's really talking about this one. And Girlfriendoseyo's mom comes from a different city in Korea, and reports that overpackaging is not NEARLY as egregious there as it is here... but overpackaging here can be pretty extreme sometimes.

That's all for today.

Be happy, my readers.

Random Canada Trip Notes:

Judging from how carefully I read OTHER K-bloggers' accounts of their travels off-topic (that is, outside of Korea), I'll spare you the pages of journalling about the old friend I haven't met since high school and all that stuff, and I'll leave you with a few combinations that have struck me lately:

1. pecan pie + coffee (americano was the kind I used) = one of the best flavor combinations I've stumbled across so far. It helped that it was at the Shilla Hotel in Seoul, so it was real crackin' good pie, and real crackin' good americano...but why didn't anybody tell me that pecan pie and coffee is as awesome a combination as soy chai latte and coffee cake, black tea and clover honey, chocolate and mint, or coke and dalk galbi? WHY DIDN'T ANYBODY TELL ME? So anyway, now I'm telling you.

2. Night driving: nice
driving in rain: fun
driving on mountain roads in, say, the Rocky Mountains: awesome
driving in areas with road signs saying "watch for wildlife" = cool: maybe I'll see an elk!
driving in rain at night = NOT fun
driving from Banff to Red Deer Alberta at night in the rain when there's a risk of a deer crossing your car's path (deer will mess up your car... and I saw two on the roadside near Cochran) = NOT FUN AT ALL

3. toast + peanut butter + sliced bananas = a whole bucket of awesome. Seriously, I never got on board that whole PB&J thing -- peanut butter's good, jam's good, but I never quite dug the two together. However, peanut butter and sliced bananas is SO FLIPPIN' GOOD! (also try: toasted white bread, sliced tomatoes, lots of mayonnaise, and a bit of salt and pepper. You'll keep making more until you run out of either tomatoes or bread)

4. My brother and brother-in-law + fatherhood and my sister and sister-in-law + motherhood = sweet.

5. Girlfriendoseyo + my family = AWESOME! They really liked her. That's good. Girlfriendoseyo + bestfriendMelfromCanada = ALSO AWESOME. You have no idea how happy it makes me when people who are important to me get along. Girlfriendoseyo + My Surrogate Family S. in Agassiz = Girlfriendoseyo gets mauled with hugs! Also super special, and super important.

Yep. I don't talk about my deep, personally-personal stuff on the blog TOOO much anymore (with a few exceptions), but I WILL tell you that I was lucky enough to have Girlfriendoseyo join me in Canada for part of my vacation, and we had hella fun, and she loved it, and "gets" some things about me that can only come of meeting my family and seeing my country. It was great.

I was eating dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Banff yesterday when suddenly a lady at the next table just right passed out and fell off her chair. I saw her face as she went down and she was right out of it. That was strange. It's funny how a human being in rough shape suddenly pulls all the people around into his/her matrix of need, and nobody can look away. We are intensely social creatures who instinctively look out for each other. I do think we are, despite the evidence to the contrary that comes up here and there. It's good when we recognize this.

Catch the Corean Commie!

The Korean NIS (National Intelligence Service) has published an online game to help you spot North Korean spies.

It includes things like people covering their mouths with their hands when they talk (holy crap! every Korean woman with a cellphone is a North Korean spy!)

People who bring weapons to protests, people who leave PC rooms quickly after posting "impure" articles, and people who wear "I love Kim Il-sung" pins are among suspects for North Korean Spy-iness.

What about people who raise funds to buy weapons to assault the police?

Go play!

And don't forget, if you see a person wearing a Kim Il Sung t-shirt, talking with his hand over his mouth as he grabs his stick and furtively leaves the PC Room after posting messages to corrupt Korea's youth, and heads for a protest to hand out tracts and incite violence while photographing sensitive government compounds, the number to call is 111: Korea's spy hotline.

Ooch! Forget Zombie movies...

I've just fallen in love with bollywood.

Going to Canada Tomorrow. Expect Light Posting

I still have lots to say... but I'll be saying it to my friends and family while I'm on vacation in Canada. Expect light posting on non-controversial topics, because I don't like moderating comment threads while I'm on freaking vacation. Unlike Christmas break, I've been just plain too durn busy putting out fires, slogging things out, negotiating crazy crap, and handling a few personal-life earthquakes, to set up a bunch of "future posts" that will come up in my absence. There's a restrospective on what's been a totally insane semester somewhere inside me, but right now, I'm quite nearly a wreck from weathering storms on numerous fronts... so you'll have to wait until I'm good and ready to talk about it.

Until then... an entire year of riding the subways, sitting beside weirdos or soju-and-squid-reeking drunks, and dealing with other people's bulgogi farts, is made up for by a suit like this.

ajosshi's a pimp!

Took this picture on a recent rainy day. Like.
enjoy the hot weather.

Thunder and Lightning

When I was a little kid, I lived in Southern Ontario, where summer evening thundershowers are a common occurrence. After bedtime, which was when they happened, the thunder used to wake me up, and I'd stand on the bed headboard, poke my head under the curtains, and look out at the skyline and empty land behind our house (before it all got developed into suburbs) and watch the lightning flash on the farmland on the other side of the lake.

To this day I love thunder and lightning storms, almost as much as they frighten one clan of my cousins, who inherited a pretty sharp fear of thunder from their mom.


we been having thunder and lightning storms in the early morning around Seoul this week, and I've been tempted to get out of bed and point my camera out the window, in hopes of getting something like this. Yeh. Supercool.

Heppy Kamaba Day my Kamabian Friends

Yep, it's july 1st, and you know what that means.

Hope you get to see this


but not this

from the golden age of MJ:

billie jean, baby. 1983, Motown: the first moonwalk (by MJ)





Yep. I said the first moonwalk by MJ. hang on to the end of this video:

that's bill bailey, in 1955.

one of my biggest annoyances about proprietary rights and such is that, while a lot of other artists see how making their stuff available on Youtube is good, free publicity which could increase your exposure, Michael Jackson's videos are all embedding disabled, and Prince (maybe my favorite artist of the '80s) won't share.

A few links:

Concerned as he is with gender perception in Korea, and the mechanics of females in society and gender relationships, I wonder if James Turnbull would be interested in this article, service, or treatment of topic:

from the Korea Times:
Is 'Substitute Man' Modern White Knight?
it's an article about a quick service enterprise gaining momentum these days where, basically, (for example, in the case of a business called "Any Man," if a single woman has a "man" issue to deal with -- say, a bookshelf to move, a bug to kill, or, I suppose, a swoon to revive, she can thumb up the service on her speed-dial, and a "white knight" on a scooter will arrive at her house within ten minutes to put his thumb on the ribbon for the gift-wrapped present, properly operate the plumbing snake, or open that darn pickle-jar. It's written up as if it's exclusively women who use the service, and exclusively men who are employed as such.

In other news:

My friend's recent experience with a bank's slap-in-the-face credit card acquisition policy for foreigners seems to put the lie to this one, but the article says banks are looking at expat customers as their next big customer demographic: Banks See Expatriates as Gold Mine

Korean Historical Films

Now, Korea's film industry has been pumping out about a film a year of important moments in Korea's history: now that the industry has the skill and money to tell stories a little better than they could in the '90s, and the freedom to do so that they didn't have during the dictatorial censorship of the '80s, it's time for some historical filmmaking! The movies made in the name of this sort of historical record keeping have been uneven, at best, and whether they are even mildly accurate to the actual events is not mine to discuss.

A quick rundown of a few:

Shilmido was quite good -- it was about a bunch of Korean men who were recruited by the South Korean military, pulled out of headed-nowhere lives to be trained into a bloodthirsty assassination squad with a mission to raid (I can't remember if it was Kim Jong-il or Kim Il-sung) the North Korean president's house and cut his throat -- in response to an attack on South Korea's president by North Korean assassins that led to a three day shootout between North Korean commandoes and the South's national guard, around the blue house.

Taegukki was the Korean equivalent of Top Gun, to me:insofar as it was the worst good movie Korea's ever made, or the best bad movie. I saw it with my dad when he came here in 2006, and it's about two brothers who end up getting ensnared in the Korean war, and the whole "brother against brother" thing gets examined, poked, exploited, and then beaten into the ground in slow-motion as machine guns fire in the background, the world grows silent, and a character shoutes, "NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" and holds its head in his lap while it breathes its last. Frankly, I thought it was awful, manipulative and gory and about an hour too long (and that last hour took the melodrama over the top, into "so bad it's good" territory, and then BACK into "so bad it's bad again" territory.)

There was a movie about the May 18th Gwangju Massagre of 1979 (maybe 1978; too lazy to fact check) that featured a line up of more top Korean stars than you could shake a stick at, and a lot of violins and slow-motion in the preview, that got tapioca reviews (at best), and that I decided not to see until somebody I knew said something good about it, and encouraged me to see it. Let's leave it at, I still haven't seen it: the most enthusiastic review I've heard so far prompted me to teach my class the phrase "damn with faint praise".

Movies to come: it should be noted that a number of these historical figures have been given the historical drama (TV Series category) treatment, but have not yet (to my limited knowledge) been given the full historical (film category) treatment. On second thought, in some cases, it might be better that way. Who'd want to see Yu Gwan-sun get the "Pearl Harbor" treatment...but then, if she got the "The Pianist" treatment instead, it might fly.

An epic about Yi Sunshin's naval battles with the Japanese.
A biopic of Yu Gwan-sun (a student, and independence martyr tortured to death for protesting Japan's colonization of Korea)
Something about the 1987 Democratization movement
Was the assassination of Park Chung-hee covered in that barber movie? I haven't seen it.
A biopic of Kim Gu
Possibly an epic about Goguryeo's King Gwang-Gye-to, Korea's greatest expansionist king, who conquered Manchuria and large portions of China's eastern coast, and who, like T.S. Eliot, who appears in both English AND American poetry anthologies, is claimed by both Korea and China as one of their own, but he's had a TV series made about him already.
Hopefully, a story about King Sejong, the greatest Korean, and one of the greatest leaders in history . . . though his life doesn't make as good copy as the others, because he was a scholar and a scientist, rather than an asskicker. The story of how he came to the throne is pretty cool, though.

R.I.P. Michael.

yeah, that's two posts in a row not about Korea. deal with it. The song's "Fan Letter to Michael Jackson" by the Rheostatics - sorry about the quality. It's the only version on Youtube, and it's a cool song I remember from the '90s, and have always wanted to hear again.

I like the "It feels good to be alive" refrain near the end.

A Prayer for Iran.

Things are getting bad over there.

Here.

Movie Franchise Tagline...

Just saw Terminator 4, and rewatched Terminator 1 on my computer. The first one is a really nice, taut action movie, though one of the new retro-pleasures of watching these old '80s action movies is snickering at the action effects that were so riveting/revolutionary/terrifying in the '80s.

(My favorite this month: Tarman, from the Return of the Living Dead movies. Awful movies, as zombie films go: they seem more based on Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video than anything scary, but Tarman's pretty cool...almost scary, and pretty awesome for '80s effects. The way he moves is occasionally really cool.)

Here's Tarman. Warning: tarman.



But The Terminator films have one thing going for them:

A super-de-duper great movie catchphrase.
"Come with me if you want to live"


(Yes, I know "I'll be back" is in there, too, but that's an Arnold line, not an exclusively Terminator line, so it doesn't count.)

And the question is:

Is there any better movie franchise catchphrase?

Here are the candidates I can think of:

1. "Yippiekiyay, Mother#*@&er!" (Die Hard)
2. either "Use the force" (a bit cheesy) or "I have a bad feeling about this" (Star Wars)
3. "Come with me if you want to live" (Terminator)
4. (are we including comedy here?) "Yeeah, baby!" (Austin Powers)
5. "What're you looking at, butthead?" (Back to the Future)
6. (maybe too short, but...) "Whoa" (Matrix)

Any others I'm missing? Help me out here, readers.

Greetings, Korea Herald Readers.

Soundtrack: hit play and start reading.


Hi there. I'm Rob. I write a blog. (this is the other blog I contribute to)

If you're a Korea Herald reader, you may have found your way here by way of the URL at the bottom of my article, "News firms of questionable quality abound". This article was a response to these two articles, which basically accused English teachers of being unfit, unprofessional, vulgar, and sex-crazed. The Pressian Article- "We are Vampires" (the original Korean) The Yonhap News article (the original Korean). Here is the original blog post I wrote about Yonhap: it's stated a little more strongly than what I put in The Herald. Here's an article in the Korea Times about the same Yonhap piece. (Yay Jason Lim)

If you are annoyed that foreigners are criticizing Korea's media, then ask yourself why we have to do it: why aren't KOREANS holding their journalists to a higher degree of accountability? If you're here to tell me Koreans ARE, great! Good for you! Keep fighting the good fight, and don't give up! Get your friends to join in. If you're here to tell me it's only the right-wing papers that do it, or only the left-wing papers that attack English papers, check out the links below: they go right across the political spectrum. (p.s.: why do newspapers all have positions on the political spectrum? isn't that weird to other people, too?)

The article I wrote is about the ugly pattern of racist journalism promoting stereotypes of English teachers: often they are stereotypes based on rumors, with no statistical proof. For some actual statistics on foreigner crime, check pages 16 and 20 in the report embedded on this page.

If you don't believe what I say about the Korean media's anti-English teacher bias, check out a more in-depth look at the way Korea's media has been systematically dragging down the reputation of English teachers in this post at a friend's blog: "A History of Scapegoating English Teachers"
and also pages 9-13 of the report here.

If you're annoyed that I named your news outlet (those would be The Chosun, the Joongang, the Hankooki), here are the links to articles where your news outlets treated English teachers in an unbalanced or sensationalist way.

Chosun Ilbo: http://www.rjkoehler.com/2007/05/29/oh-those-naughty-aids-threatening-skirt-chasing-aussie-english-teachers/
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200705/200705280029.html

Joongang Daily: http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2889573

This article talks about the Joongang daily's reporting on the playboy party: http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LPOD&mid=sec&sid1=001&sid2=119&oid=044&aid=0000048618
and this article talks about how Joongang's coverage of the playboy party was biased and selective:
http://news.naver.com/hotissue/popular_read.php?date=2005-01-14&section_id=000&office_id=117&article_id=0000001963&seq=2
This one does too.
http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=102&oid=047&aid=0000057135

here's the hangooki on unqualified English teachers
http://weekly.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200706/wk2007061113024637070.htm#_blank

I'd recommend linking Matt's blog post, "A brief history of scapegoating English Teachers," which gathers most of these sources in one place. http://populargusts.blogspot.com/2007/09/brief-history-of-scapegoating-english.html

"Beware the Ugly White English Teacher" http://sports.chosun.com/news/ntype2.htm?ut=1&name=/news/life/200705/20070528/75827008.htm

English Joongang Daily: connects English teachers to a group of pedophiles who never tried to become English teachers, and many of whom had never even visited Korea. http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2889573

If you really, really agree with me, and want to help hold the Korean Media to a higher standard, check out this brand-new site created to do exactly that, and contact this guy about how you can help contribute to the site. It's a worthwhile project that needs people power to become all that it could be.

I know that not every Korean is a racist. I'm not stupid. I also know that not every Korean journalist is a racist. As I said: I'm not stupid. I also know that English teachers are not all angels in white, living like monks in Korea. (Not stupid, remember?) however, I wish news outlets were responsible and balanced in the way they reported minorities, especially when those reports DO cause our lives to be more difficult. I've been told to my face by students that after Christopher Paul Neil's arrest, they didn't trust Canadians for a while. To my face. I do not like being held responsible for the actions of other people who share nothing with me except the country of birth, and if I AM to be associated with my birth country, I wish it would be for the positives and the high water marks, not the low points. Associate Canada with socialized health care, Tommy Douglas, Terry Fox, Wayne Gretzky and Michael Oondaatje, not Robert William Pickton and Clifford Olsen and Christopher Paul Neil, in the same way I'm sure you'd rather I thought of King Sejong, Shin Saimdang and Yi Sunshin than Kim Jong-il, Cho Seung-hee, Park Han-se, and Woo Bum-kon when I think of Korea.

And honestly, though I don't know why my motivation should matter, I write this stuff because I care about Korea, and I'd like to see Korea become a better place. Not out of some kind of smug, colonial arrogance, but because my Korean friends are just as frustrated as I am that Korea isn't always what it wished it could be, and writing about the gap between what Korea is and what Korea wants to be, is the beginning step to closing that gap. If I didn't care about Korea, I'd drink more, finish my contract, pack my bags, say "I'm tired of this shit. Fuck it." and leave. And a lot of people do, but telling me to go home isn't helpful.

To know more about why I, and other expats complain about Korea, I recommend this series: Why do Expats (in Korea) Complain So Much?

And to see how I really feel about Korea, I recommend the links in the sidebar to the right.

Thanks for stopping by!

PimatGoodbye, Pimatgol. Redevelopment at a great loss

Photos from here
here.
here
here

Pimatgol: one of the loveliest little side-alley tangles in Seoul, is being razed.

Soon, this:

Will be replaced with more of this:
and this: the La Meilleur building, and one of the more eyesorey eyesores in downtown Seoul,
and this: tossing a bone to the destroyed pimatgol with this mockery of the original back-alley (600 year history?...needs a 7-11)
I hate when Seoul's cool neighbourhoods get ruined by redevelopment or gentrification... in Dali (and that CHINA, folks, freakin' CHINA!) the municipal government has laws about certain neighborhoods, requiring new buildings to match the style of the old buildings, in order to maintain the local feeling, and a city that wants to be a world hub of everything can't even preserve one of the coolest alley networks in the city, and the kind of area that COULD BE MARKETED. Dumbasses.

Seoul is poorer for the loss of pimatgol. It was such a lovely area, and really should have been cleaned up rather than razed. I lived around here for 16 months, and it was one of my favorite times in Korea, and pimatgol is like a maze of wonders, but now it's been cleared right out, and if those homey, bustling little alleyways with their awesome hole-in-the-wall restaurants get replaced with another glass-and-steel abomination. I hate, hate, hate, how the local color gets bleached out for steel-and-glass, and I rue the fact Seoul was hyper-developed during the steel-and-glass era, which remains to my mind the ugliest architectural aesthetic out there.

Matt from Popular Gusts has written a lovely elegy for pimatgol: the kind of place where you might accidentaly have a bowl of makkeolli with a poet. At La Meilleur, you're more likely to accidentally brush shoulders with a social climber or a made-up gold digger.

King Baeksu, who connects with Pimatgol in a very personal way, has more.

And Korea is poorer.

Korean Mental Illness Treatment: So Bad it's Tantamount to Persecution? Refugee Says Yes

Hat tip to BiJnD

Holy crap. This is one of the stories so embarrassing that Korean Tourism should suspend operations and send all its people over to work in Korean mental health programs to improve them, before they continue promoting Korea in conventional ways.

Canada just awarded refugee status to a paranoid-schizophrenic Korean woman, not because her church was out to get her, as her original complaint went, but because Korean mental health care is so poor that it amounts to persecution.

Yep. You read that right. Korean health care is so poor that Canada awarded refugee status to a Korean woman. Vancouver Sun reports.

from the article:

South Koreans with mental illness are treated as an extreme underclass, with one hospital room sleeping 100 women with just 15 mats and no room for personal belongings, according to a letter submitted to the board and written by Daniel Fisher, executive director the National Empowerment Center in Lawrence, Mass.

However, before we get too high on Canada as the greatest country in the world...read some of the comments below the article. Sure, it's no Korea Times comment board, and some of the people might be right about Canada's ability to care for its own mental illness patients, but it's still pretty bad.

Happy longest day of the year.

Image source
That's all. Have a good one, dear readers.

New Game at Roboseyo: weirdest "please hold until a customer care clerk becomes available" music

Rules are simple:

What would be the weirdest song to hear while waiting for a call-center clerk to become available?

Put your answer in the comments. You can go weird: (Bela Lugosi is Dead) or ironic (like playing "Alive" as an in-flight movie), or whatever you like.

Bonus points if you include a link to a youtube clip of the song.

My first submission: not too out there or anything, but a great video: "Pick Up The Phone" by Notwist.

Ten Albums that Make Roboseyo Happy

Here are the ten CDs that have really made me happy over the last half-year.

Including my bliss-out of the week: slow with horns, by Dan Deacon, from the album "Bromst"


The rules are simple: I must have discovered the CD sometime in the last six months. I don't care if some of them are old news to you, and I also don't care if some of them don't float your boat, for any reason. They make me happy, and that's enough. In no particular order:

6. Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish I were an Eagle. Rich, deep voice, gentle arrangements, quirky lyrics: so much to like in a really, really nice, intriguing but relaxing Sunday afternoon album. Favorite song: "Rococo Zephyr" for having a Rococo Zephyr as a character in the song. Here's another song from the album, on Youtube.
I've talked enough about TV On The Radio that I won't write about it here.

4. Dan Deacon - Bromst - some artists have music good for parties. Dan Deacon's music sounds like the instruments are having a party. Favorite track on the album: "Slow With Horns". "Wham City" from "Spiderman of the Rings" is a better song than any on Bromst, the newer one, but Bromst wins out for more consistent awesomenity.
listen to Dan Deacon on his Myspace Page.

9. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion - the whole album is a big, noisy, fun bliss-out. Here's one track with a pretty trippy video, too. Stars AND bubbles.
Bat For Lashes - Two Suns

1. Camper Van Beethoven - Key Lime Pie - a classic from the 1989, a solid songwriting effort with wit and that something extra that makes you want to listen to it again a week later, and snags lines and phrases in your head.

7. Jamie Cullum - Twentysomething - best Jeff Buckley song I've heard by Not Jeff Buckley so far: Lover, You Should Have Come Over. High and Dry gets a nice, mellow jazz version that reveals the song's strong songwriting.
Jang SaIk 장사익 -- 하늘가는 길 the song 찔레꽃 is just heartbreaking.

2. Mugison - Mugiboogie - wacky, weird, noisy and then touching. This album is all over the map, and continuously intriguing, if a bit inaccessible. You really, seriously never know which instrument or sound is going to jump out of a corner and startle you next.
The Music Tapes - Music for Clouds and Tornadoes

3. Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - Naturally - wins by a nose over 100 Days, 100 Nights, because of the song "Stranded in your Love" an awesome, awful, co-dependent duet, which unfortunately isn't on Youtube. Here's the title track from 100 Days, 100 Nights, which contains all the reasons you should love Sharon Jones: she's a throwback to that old '70s motown sound, that rich, fat sound, the swaggering Aretha Franklin swing. The power, the heat, all that!

5. Sufjan Stevens - Songs for Christmas - Vol. 1-5. I wrote about these before, so I won't now.

8. Swan Lake - Enemy Mine - creaky, articulate, odd but compelling, Swan Lake is the team-up of two indie rock-superstars. Their first album was uneven, as if they hadn't figured out how to sound TOGETHER yet, but this one is a really nice, tight effort from Spencer Krug (a favorite of mine from Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown, who brings something sweeping yet childlike to his instrumentals) and Dan Bejar (of Destroyer, the awesome The New Pornographers, who brings verve and wit to his lyrics) Here's a nice track with a claustrophobic feeling that suddenly opens into one of those great bridges that Spencer Krug pops off with startling frequency. (at 2:00)

10. - The Walkmen - You & Me - didn't impress me at first, but it's been growing on me more and more. Another solid album from top to bottom, that's got some strong songwriting (I'm a sucker for good songwritine) and an atmosphere all its own. The emotive but slightly adrift vocals, and then frantic, mounting choruses and bridges, create a nice counterpoint. There's a lot of open space in here. In the New Year is a good track that shows off their strengths.

11. (bonus:) Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space - Broken Heart - sweeping orchestral spiritual sadness. After the hypnotic repetitions of intro song "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space," this is the one that actually carries the album off INTO space.

There. Enjoy that for now.

Rob

Do something about the Yonhap Race-baiting Article

Two things to do:

1. Want to send an angry email to the reporter? Use this. Be sure to CC the Yonhap ombudsman.

To: ssahn@yna.co.kr
CC: ombudsman@yna.co.kr

포털 네이버에 올라온 6월 11일자 당신의 기사 “자질 시비 원어민 교사 판친다”를 읽고 매우 충격을 받았습니다.

많은 대다수의 원어민 교사들은 매일 매일 그들의 수업에 열심히 참여하고 있으며, 실제로 그들이 하고 있는 일에 즐겁게 참여하고 있습니다. 대다수의 원어민 교사들은 아이들과 아이들의 미래에 대하여 고민하고 있습니다. 그러나 항상 예외는 있게 마련입니다. 하지만 당신의 기사는 마치 대다수의 원어민이 자질에 문제가 있는것처럼 만들었습니다.

저는 당신의 기사에서 어떤 원어민의 인터뷰도 없는 것을 보았습니다. 단지 전해 들은 이야기이다라는 식이었습니다. 사실과 그 사실을 증명할 만한 증거는 어디에 있는건가요? 언론의 기본과 기준은 어디에 있나요? 언론으로서의 전문적인 기준은 모든 측이 공평하게 이야기되어져야하며, 양측에게 모두 이야기할 수 있는 기회가 주어져야함을 요구합니다. 당신이 기사화했다는 것만으로 그것이 사실이 되는 것은 아닙니다.

이런 종류의 선정적인 기사 보도가 마치 철저한 조사에 바탕을 둔 기사처럼 보인다는 점에서 저는 분개하지 않을 수 없습니다. 불행한 것은, 이런 식의 접근이 언론에서 너무 흔하게 발견된다는 사실입니다.

당신의 기사는 한국의 전문 뉴스 통신사로서의 기준도 지키지 않고 있을 뿐만아니라, 외국인 혐오증과 자민족 중심성을 더욱 촉진시키고 있습니다.

연합뉴스! 그런 기본도 안되는 기사를 싣는 당신이 부끄럽습니다.

[Translation]

I was shocked to find your 6-11 article “자질 시비 원어민 교사 판친다” on naver.com.

The vast majority of native English teachers show up for work every
day ready to teach, and actually enjoy what they are doing. They care
about the students and their future. There are always exceptions, but
this article makes it seem like the rule [norm].

I noticed that there are no quotes from English teachers in this
story. It is all hear-say. Where are the facts and supporting
evidence? Where are the journalistic integrity and standards?

Professional standards demand that all sides be equally represented
and given a chance to speak for themselves. Just because you print
something doesn’t make it fact.

I’m outraged that this kind of sensationalist opinion piece actually
passes as investigative journalism. Unfortunately, this approach is
too common in the media.

Not only is this story below the standards of a national newswire, it
also fuels the fires of xenophobia and ethnocentrism.

Shame on you, Yonhap, for printing this ignorant hate speech!

2. Help me gather material for an article I'm planning to send to various news sources and Korea brand promoters.

Here's the explanation, with a link to the survey at the end.