common sense? chew, digest, make it your own

I used to read only one newspaper. Then I realized that that’s the worst idea ever for a non-party affiliate like myself, especially in Korea. If you, like myself, do not have a specific party affiliation or would like to get a panorama view of current events rather than a glimpse from one corner, I would advise you to read more than one newspaper that will give you a better understanding of the Korean political spectrum.

Case in point: the on-going controversy over the planned construction of three transmission towers in Miryang, one of which will be built within a kilometer to a village, causing disruption and evacuation.

The photos of the story on the front page of the newspapers make the difference clear from the get-go. Chosun Ilbo shows a photo of the construction site and the pit dug by protesters (not-people-centered). Hankyoreh, on the other hand, shows a large photo of the protesting senior citizens and villagers (people-centered).

 

October 7th, 2013
Chosun Ilbo’s front page photo of Miryang transmission tower protest coverage

October 7th, 2013
Hankyoreh’s coverage of the Miryang transmission tower protest

 

Chosun’s article focuses on the unnecessary intervention of the Unified Progressive Party and ‘outside parties’. It chooses to center its story around a certain police officer’s Facebook updates which emphasizes the ‘warm relations between the police and villagers’ (“We are confronting the situation with respect to our villagers”) and how outside forces are ruining a respectful confrontation to a political swamp. Hankyoreh’s article revolves around the voices of the elderly citizens (“we are not outside forces”) and the emphasis on the political power game that is at play to which people like Lee Chi-woo (73) who took his own life as an act of protest are a pawn and victim.

Both are geared to evoke emotional responses. One for sympathy toward police officers, who are humanized and only doing their jobs, and trying to introduce objectivity to a situation that is portrayed as nothing less than political. The other towards the ‘innocent’ elderly citizens who have a right to go on living in peace without needless transmission towers and power games.

See the danger of reading only one story yet?

Facts are not mere facts. Media has biases, platforms, and different colored lenses that can shape one’s views unknowingly. So make sure to try on a couple of glasses to appreciate a comprehensive landscape. Unless you have strong political affiliations that are stubborn to opposing views. In which case, just patiently enjoy life until a shutdown.

 

(Postscript: Does this piece of writing have a bias? You bet. I’m being biased toward “un-bias” and objectivity. So don’t take it for word value; chew it, digest it, and then make it your own.)

Public Opinion on the U.S. Government Shutdown

My favorite comments thus far:

“If I were a panda in the National Zoo in Washington, I would be outraged that my zoo is closed because of the government shutdown and my zookeepers aren’t being paid, while the House Zoo on Capitol Hill stays open with its members still paid. I would petition to have the animals take over law-making, and the House members put in cages and fed bamboo shoots. Then we could watch pandas on C-span and would have budgets on time, too. Win-win!” – Nicholas Kristof for the New York Times

 

“Our government may be shutting down in a few hours. So, folks, get ready for absolutely no noticeable difference.” – Conan O’Brien

 

“The shutdown would be less expensive if the Obama administration didn’t have workers setting up barricades around the World War II memorial and the Lincoln Memorial and if guards weren’t stationed to prevent citizens from walking on federal paths and trails.” – from Brooklyn

 

“And who are these people, exactly, who will realize how useless most of the government is? Surely they are not low-income preschoolers and their parents who benefit from Head Start. They are not the poor, elderly, or disabled who need efficient resolution of their Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security claims. They are not people who visit national parks. They are not veterans. They are not people who believe in the correct apportionment of the House through the Census. They are not people who care about a safe workplace or civil rights enforcement. I don’t recognize this as the profile of anyone I know. Maybe they’re all in Rep. Blackburn’s district.” – from Los Angeles

 

“‘Listen, we’re going to pay you. We’re just not going to pay you today, but we’re going to pay you with interest, and we will pay everybody that’s due money’ [Florida Republican Representative Ted Yoho’s word for America on the worries of the current shutdown’s effect on global markets]

If I told my credit card company that they’d raise my interest rate.” – from New York

 

I’ve always wondered…

Link to article: “Plastic surgery in North Korea: More common than you’d think” 

 

PHOTO CREDIT: David Guttenfelder/AP
Source: The Telegraph

 

But you know what, pretty NK women that I’ve glimpsed in photos or on NK state television always come across to me as having a certain simplistic natural beauty that perhaps plastic-surgery-mecca SK is losing.

baby white lions

Everland Zoo’s two new white lion cubs

 

it was the first time that the cubs went outside

 

the cubs’ first media appearance

 

behind all the cute pictures, is all the hard work :)

 
“Everland Zoo shows off two recently born rare white lions. The zoo says there are only about 300 white lions in the world. With the birth of the two male cubs, the zoo now has eight.” AP Seoul coverage