[KS] Comparing media coverage in Korea and Europe

[george katsiaficas]

Dear Frank and all,

Frank raises an interesting issue, namely how cultures and classes perceive
the same events differently.

I have been wondering for some time about a cultural variance that appears
daily: namely, the ways media (including reports on our list) can so often
get wrong the basic facts of situations in Korea. In Europe, such
misrepresentations (such as maintaining PSPD organized the first candlelight
protests, or that the same individuals arrested at a press conference also
disrupted the Hi Seoul event) would simply not be allowed to happen--or if
they did, the journalist or publication promulgating them would be compelled
to recant--minimally by printing a correction.

Obvious explanations for the distortions here include the conservative
ownership of major media and the bias of reporters. Yet the problem is
bigger than that. US media reports on Korea have also been lopsided and
often downright incorrect or propagandistic. I lived in divided Germany for
eight years, yet I have never witnessed such distorted coverage as I have
seen regarding North Korea. While part of the reason may lie with Korean
sources, that cannot be the sole explanation.

Can anyone offer insight into the issue of why reports on Korea can so often
be downright factually incorrect?

By the way, thank you for your kind words about my book on European social
movements. I might add that I am not now teaching in Korea but am finishing
a two-volume, ten-country book, Asia's Unknown Uprisings.

george katsiaficas



> From: Frank Hoffmann <hoffmann at koreaweb.ws>
> Reply-To: Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
> Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 13:09:20 -0700
> To: Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
> Subject: Re: [KS] South Korea's Rollback of Democratic Rights
> 
> Dear All:
> 
> Allow me to start this by saying that Professor
> Katsiaficas' works have over the years been both
> enlightening and delightful reading to me. ... I
> especially enjoyed your book, The Subversion of
> Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements
> and the Decolonization of Everyday Life. I did
> not know you are now teaching in Korea and
> writing about Korean politics, not until seeing
> these posts on the list. In 1986 my hasukchip
> ajumma, watching me doing my weekly ppallae,
> exclaimed, completely taken by what she saw:
> "Boy, your underwear looks just like our's in
> Korea, you are not American!" (How fortunate I
> was, she did not know anything about the place I
> came from.) Ever since I am aware that there are
> not only differences in identities, and not only
> differences in the perception of identities,
> cultural ones as well as political ones, but more
> importantly, differences in communicating
> differences.
> 
> Communicating differences (political culture):
> Many years ago Jim Thomas and I -- he was working
> on Korean squatters then -- had a good talk that
> was a kind of eye-opener for me. Not sure what
> term he used then, but Jim pointed out, from an
> anthropological and sociological point of view,
> that Korea has, compared to the U.S., a very
> different "culture of conflict." That is,
> conflicts get worked out in different ways. As a
> case in point, if some friends go out for a drink
> and two of them get into a fight, then one might
> well get physically aggressive, one guy may at
> least threaten to hit the other guy -- WHILE
> being perfectly well aware and expecting that his
> other friends in that gathering will be holding
> him back from actually doing it, or will at least
> interfere in various ways to calm the situation.
> Next morning both guys may have a breakfast
> together. Now imagine such conflict happening in
> the U.S. or in a European country or the Middle
> East. The whole conflict as well as the
> consequences will very likely look completely
> different, depending on the country and area this
> happens and what set of rules applies for
> conflict situations in each culture.
> 
> Some parts of this discussion reads, to me at
> least, somewhat semi-colonial in approach --
> there are many implications that protest,
> conflict solving, and political culture as such
> has to follow some middle-class white American
> rule set of political correctness. Outside the
> U.S. politics gets in general a little "louder,"
> especially if there is really something at stake
> that might get moved, if "you have the choice"
> between more than just getting twinkies with or
> without sparkles, if there is a wider political
> spectrum than one finds in the United States (and
> it is wider everywhere else). If we look at
> modern Korean history we see that Koreans and
> Europeans have indeed the same undergarment
> (although sometimes worn reverse): colonialism,
> anarchism, Marxism, various revolutions, Social
> Democracy, Fascism, racism in all facets, colors,
> and odors, and everything nicely rotates every 30
> or 40 or 50 years. The kind of political actions,
> the ways of communicating politics that Scott was
> criticizing, seems rather "normal" for most
> Europeans (and probably to South Americans as
> well). A right or wrong, legitimate-or-not
> discussion only seems to mirror one's own value
> system. I wish there were more of a discussion on
> this LIST that would give some sociological
> interpretation of what is happening -- anything
> that goes beyond the usual journalistic
> day-to-day political info and commentary. What,
> for example, is happening to the new
> Cyberdog-POP-culture generation in Korea, how are
> they involved, if at all, and how do they
> organize and communicate politics?
> 
> Below attached PHOTO:
> Former Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of
> the Federal Republic of Germany, Joschka Fischer,
> attacking police officers -- then a leading
> member of the group 'Proletarian Union for Terror
> and Destruction.' (After lecturing at Stanford U
> for some time he now seems to work for Madeleine
> Albright's firm Albright Group in Washington,
> D.C.) Interestingly enough, the photos were first
> "unearthed" by politically conservative Bettina
> Röhl, daughter of RAF terrorist Ulrike Meinhof,
> who many of my generation grew up with, first
> listening to her children's and youth broadcasts
> in radio and TV and then reading her political
> commentary in the magazine Konkret that was very
> popular in the 1970s. Political correctness has
> many variations, and the post-Kwangju
> pro-democracy movement of the 1980s did not
> exactly move anything because anyone followed
> American middle-class ideas of political
> engagement either.
> 
> Have a nice weekend!
> 
> Frank
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> --------------------------------------
> Frank Hoffmann
> http://koreaweb.ws