Form over Substance in Korea: Part 2
( “Gravity” by nickwheeleroz)
Korea and the World
At the end of Part One, I mentioned that the Korean education system is routinely held up as a model for the West by foreign observers, and gave an example from The Economist magazine here. Here is a more recent example from The New York Times too.
Now before I came to Korea, I had a great deal of respect for both news sources, but the longer I’m here and the more articles about Korea I read in them, I realise that I can’t trust the accuracy of either. Anyone with just a few months of teaching experience in either a Korean university, public-school, or after-school institute knows that the system as a whole possesses numerous and systematic flaws, and that Korean parents themselves are simply desperate to have their children taught overseas. So what gives? Why do reporters that supposedly “read between the lines,” always “question everything,” and are paid to do the research that I do for free routinely produce such complete crap about Korea? If I lived in, say, Syria, would I find the same of English-language articles produced about that country? Or is this something…surely not unique, but more pronounced in Korea than elsewhere?
Scott Burgeson, introduced in Part 1, makes a convincing case for the latter. To finish my discussion of his thoughts on the decline of Korean Studies programs overseas:
…the fact of the matter is that it is almost impossible for a non-Korean critic to make a decent living writing about Korean culture for English-speaking readers. Thus, the lack of public or private grant assistance for Western critics covering Korean culture means that it is difficult to find commenters on Korean culture in the popular English-language press who actually know what they’re talking about (or who are not simply hacks).
I remember when I interviewed the Japanese director Suzuki Seijun in Tokyo nearly ten years ago, the staff at the Japan Foundation were extremely happy to hear about my work and went out of their way to provide stills from his films to print in my magazine at no cost to myself. They did not care whether I had a degree behind my name or not, but were simply pleased that I was helping to promote Japanese culture to an English-speaking readership — and I might note that an extremely transgressive director Suzuki is hardly a “respectable” standard-bearer of Japanese culture. My interactions with the Korea Foundation have been, well, in the interests of being diplomatic, quite the opposite. Perhaps I am burning bridges by posting this kind of message to the List, but since I gave up applying for grants here many years ago, I know that it will not affect me one way or the other so I really don’t care anymore.
There are many reasons why Korean culture is and shall continue to remain relatively obscure on the world stage, and my experiences as an independent critic here are just one more example of why this is so.
As explained in Part One, much of the problem is most Koreans thinking that only those affiliated to a university are “qualified” to write about Korea. Sure, there would be no direct link between that and those reporters mentioned above, but it reduces the already limited pool of people “engaged” with Korea, and like I explain here, their connections with Korea and Koreans have an impact far greater than they may at first appear. Hence, for one, the ultimately unsustainable nature of the Korean Wave compared to its Japanese counterpart, which I’ve discussed in many posts here.
(Image by gyoul)
This reminds me of what GordSellar has described as:
…the standard, near-universal conviction among Koreans that a positive image of Korea must be presented to the world. It goes without saying that, in this sense, the image can only really be positive if it’s presented in terms that will appear positive on the world’s terms, rather than on Korea’s terms.
And the fact that, in Korea:
…on some level, for many Koreans, a discussion is also a promo-op, a chance to represent the nation in a positive light, to make people think well of their nation; or, if it is not that, it devolves into a more basic “defense” of the nation, which is hardly any more useful for finding out people’s real opinions.
Previously I’d thought that the monstrosities in the English-language media presenting news of the “success” of the Korean Wave overseas were as bad as they were because they primarily for a domestic audience; over 95% of the readers of the English-language Korea Herald, for instance, are Koreans. And for sure, that still plays a large role, as too does the fact that most Korean authors on the Korean Wave are well aware that they’re writing propaganda rather than actual news. But seeing as how most Koreans think that Korea must always be presented positively to non-Koreans, but positive in their terms rather than Koreans’, then I’m increasingly convinced many of those authors are genuinely convinced that what they’re writing is what non-Koreans want and will respond positively to. That the results are usually anything but is, I think, a reflection of the self-imposed relative isolation of Korea that I’ve described in these two posts.
It’s a long shot, and for sure there is bad English all over the world, but nothing symbolizes this to me more than the signage at stadiums for the 2002 World Cup here. Billions spent on what in many cases have become little more than white elephants 6 years later, but the designers of things specifically designed for non-Koreans didn’t feel the need to consult even a dictionary, let alone the opinions of an actual non-Korean:
(Source)
(Update: There wasn’t really any appropriate place for it in this post, but I did want to mention this factoid often uncritically accepted overseas too. See this article on that too, and thanks to GordSellar for passing it on)
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I’d wager money those signs were written (and printed, and posted) at the last minute. Never underestimate the amount of decent work that gets lost because of employment decisions based on anything but actual job qualification and low workplace efficiency, both habitually made up for with last minute 빨리빨리.
I know a guy who was asked to consult on whether a certain slogan made sense in English, for a Korean organization — one you’ve mentioned on this blog, actually. It didn’t, he told them so, spent hours (and not alone) helping brainstorm a better one, and what do you think ended up on the organization’s ads? Yup: the original nonsensical thing.
When I heard it, I though, “Some older guy in a suit liked that original slogan, and he’s the oldest involved member of the staff,” but now I have to wonder if it was all too last minute to make it in? Other egregiously messed up stuff has gotten left as-is despite my own feedback & comments & recommendations, because it was simply “too late to fix it.”
The psychology of reading the Korean Herald as a Korean must be interesting: the emotional and psychological effect of imagining Westerners reading this newspaper must colour reactions to the kinds of articles translated, and so on. I didn’t know 95% of subscribers are Korean, though it makes sense. I wonder how many of those people actually read more than one section per issue, though!
I always wondered, when reading the Korea Times, Korea Herald and the Joong Ang , “who else is reading them” and why? I’ve never seen those papers outside Korea, (and it was almost impossible to get them outside of Seoul too)
The number of non Koreans in Korea is so small it seems amazing they can support three English Language daily newspapers so why do they bother?
Gord, you’re probably right. Jon, I think you missed the point…virtually all of the readers of the papers you mention are Korean. They’re pretty easy to get outside of Seoul too. When was the last time you looked?
The piss poor media in Korea is one of the reasons I started blogging to at least provide some better information in regards to USFK issues for those living in Korea then what the Korean media was providing. I have been blogging for nearly four years and have seen only marginal improvement in the Korean media.
I was told before (so take it for what it is worth) that the English language Korean papers in Korea are funded mostly from Korean corporations and universities that subscribe to them to put in their lobbies, waiting rooms, libraries, etc. to give the places more of an international feel though hardly anyone can read them. This may explain why there is so little effort into improving the quality of these papers if the majority of the subscribers cannot even read them.
I haven’t read the Korea Herald or Times or any paper like that in about three years myself, so I couldn’t really say if there’s been any improvement, but I have heard from those that subscribe to either of them that the former especially is slowly getting better. Whereas the latter regularly prints opinion pieces by freaks, most notoriously and recently Steve Schertzer, I hear the Herald is printing pieces by people like Expat Jane and the author of the “Shooting Words” site about learning Korean, both in my blogroll.
I’d readily believe what you say about the funding for the papers though. I’ve seen one or the other used to give supposed sophistication and/or an international feel to numerous billboard and printed advertisements here.
Gord, the wee story above about your friend and the nonsensical slogan sounds very very familiar. I used to get frustrated and make a fuss at work about this sort of thing; now I just giggle. Though from my experience, it’s pretty much always because the old dick from the top floor liked it, not because it was last minute. In fact if anything, what’s really scandalous is the amount of time and effort spent agonizing over the slogan/title/buzzword before deciding to ignore my advice and run with the original nonsense.
Work-related whinge over, sorry.
Palapo,
Oh, I’m quite sure the old-guy-on-the-top-floor syndrome explains a lot, but I can’t discount 빨리빨리 syndrome — I’ve experienced having comments and editing marks (sometimes crucial ones) ignored because there was no time to “fix” the problems. Even when doing so was costing them money (proofreading isn’t free) and even when not fixing them could jeopardize the project. Last-minute-itis is not to be discounted. :)
But yeah, old-guy-on-the-top-floor syndrome explains a lot.
My experience of trying to get a copy of any English-language newspaper is that outside of major cities (like Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Daejon…) it’s very hard to find a newsstand that carries them. You can very easily subscribe, but if you don’t want to, it can be very tough to just pick up a copy of the paper. Usually one or two bookstores in town carry a couple of copies. That’s how it was for me in Jeonju, and in Iksan, forget about it! (But in both places, it was easy to get the workplace to subscribe for the office, and though nobody read seems ever to be reading it when I go to the main office, my department subscribes to one or two of the English-language dailies.)
The Herald is getting better, though I have issues with the owners’ (though not the middlemens’) attitudes toward contributors. Newspapers are not charities, after all.
The phenomenon of “slowly getting better” is one that I can acknowledge, yet not put much stock in. Life is too short to resign oneself to hoping it hits relativistic speeds so that a decent standard is achieved within our lifetime. (Something my fiancée has recently come to recognize when it comes to the prolonged senescence and zombiehood of sexism and racism here.)