[KS] Comparing media coverage in Korea and Europe
Frank Hoffmann
hoffmann at koreaweb.ws
Sun May 10 08:17:59 EDT 2009
George Katsiaficas wrote:
>I lived in divided Germany for
>eight years, yet I have never witnessed such distorted coverage as I have
>seen regarding North Korea.
But that is a very questionable comparison. Both
German states were sitting in a glass house. In
WEST Germany we used to watch Italo Western or
Czech children programs in East German TV, or
change West German money with friends in East
Berlin (for black market rates) to buy books or
art in the East. And East Germans closely
followed the lives of J.R. and Bobby in Dallas
while watching West German TV -- often also got
their info about what happened in their own state
from West German media. There were lively
exchanges in pretty much all areas of life
between East and West, personal contacts --
day-to-day contacts, trade contacts, cultural
contacts of all sorts, academic exchanges, and
both sides even acted as a kind of corrective to
each other -- there always was another view, an
alternative system (maybe hardly acceptable
alternatives, but still...). Germany never
experienced a civil war, and West Germany never
had to go through the kind of authoritarian rule
that South Korea went through under Park
Chung-hee, was never so isolated from its direct
neighbors. But you know all this in as much
detail as I do.
One of my favorite anecdotes is a visit with
Professor Ingeborg Göthel, then Korean history
Professor in EAST Berlin, at one of the large
first class hotels in Seoul -- to meet someone
from the Korean History Compilation Committee
there. That was during the Asian Games when
Korean security forces "tested out" their
security measures for the upcoming Olympic Games.
We both went in together and because of the
special timing had to show our passports ....
well, East and West German passports really
looked QUITE different! The officer looked and
both passports and just stumbled "togil?"
(Germany?), and let us in without asking any
further question. The idea that we could possibly
be from different German states was at the time
just completely unimaginable to him.
>Obvious explanations for the distortions here include the conservative
>ownership of major media
That is certainly one of the main reasons. And
then, in 20 years, not even 20 years, and with a
colonial and then some sort of semi-colonial
history, it is certainly not too easy to develop
a truly free press. And South Koreans have no
other direct *experience* with other socialists
countries (same as North Americans) -- other than
China, and that also only since a relatively
short period. This is a very different situation
from Europe. Wouldn't it make more sense to
compare South Korea with e.g. Taiwan or
Singapore? (But comparing such issues is very
problematic in any case.)
Frank
--
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Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws
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