Loving Korean

There is a video that raised quite a storm both among the foreign community in Korea and, as Kimchi Man informs me, Korean women married to American men. The video depicts the “shocking” reality of foreign men mistreating Korean women.

The segment is stellar example of bad and cheap journalism. They make shocking claims but fail to provide one single piece of evidence. I honestly laughed when I watched it. The “shocking” footage they got is of a foreign man with his arm around Korean woman’s waist. These “shocking” consequences were, according to them, pregnancy and AIDS. If you ask me, the only message this segment manages to get out is: Use protection.

Of course, the “victims” were conveniently not available, but instead these stories were given by people who heard them from someone’s someone. It is painfully obvious that this segment was made quickly, poorly, without any effort, using the old tricks of sensationalism and scandal-mongering. And judging by the amount of views and the buzz created, sadly, they succeeded.

Please don’t be angry at this video.  They are feeding on your anger. Your anger is making them richer.

I urge you not to watch this video. I urge you not to talk about this video.

The amount of discussion and views they got from foreigners is sending the message to MBC that this is the most successful segment they have ever produced. When they produced segments that were educational and true, in which a journalist has put a lot of effort, we completely ignored it. In fact, I am sure many people never even heard about MBC before this. Remember, negative publicity is still publicity. Don’t give them what they want.

If you believe this topic is important and worthy of a discussion, by all means talk about it, but do so without bringing more views to this video.

If you are absolutely too curious, find a transcript and read it. But I promise you, you are not missing out on anything.