Ignore the “shocking” video

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.

2 thoughts on “Ignore the “shocking” video

  1. i’m not angry about what mbc did (cuz we’re not like this!). i only ask myself, what korean people think about us (foreigners) now. and what do they think about this video?

    • Well, Kimchi Man agreed with my views on this video. Neither of us believes it will change what people think. Those that already held these views are going to see the video as confirmation of them, those that didn’t will shrug it off.

      Kimchi Man thinks Koreans are going to forget about the video much sooner than foreigners will. :)

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