Friday, March 28, 2014

Keep it in the family!

At the Korea Herald, columnist Kim Ji-hyun asks, "Dear Lufthansa, are you racist?" She then immediately answers her own question with "Probably not, but this was the question that first popped into my mind when I heard about a bunch of unfortunate [Korean] reporters who missed their Lufthansa flight out of Europe a few days ago." The reporters "mistook the time of their flight ― they had confused the boarding time and the time the plane actually took off ― and had to buy tickets for another flight out of the country the following day." She first criticizes them for their lack of intelligence, but then goes on to surmise that the staff were unhelpful to this "boisterous group of loud and probably less-than-attractive Asian reporters (compared to their blond, long-legged European counterparts anyway)" because the staff were racist. Though she imagines the Korean reporters were "making a lot of noise, I’m sure, as Asians usually seem to do when they get together abroad" and calls them "boisterous," the reason the staff were unhelpful was not because of their (assumed) annoying behaviour, but because they were "less-than-attractive Asian reporters."

I could only think to myself when I read this, "Projecting much?" She finishes with this:
All in all, it was the Korean reporters who made a mess of things, since everything started when they mistook their flight time. But when you think about Korean Air and Asiana, and the pains they take to be nice to patrons, one can’t help but think, why fly anything else?
Indeed. Best to keep it in the family.


[Hat tip to Patrick.]

2 comments:

Anonymous_Joe said...

In the article cited, the author wrote, "another thing that bothered me was that once Lufthansa decided not to help the reporters, they had to take all of their bags out of the plane. This process took more than 10 minutes, so to Koreans who are used to putting efficiency above all else, they could not understand why they could not take that 10 minutes to board, which would have made everyone happy."

The author couldn't understand that international flight regulations and laws governing the boarding of aircraft applied to her fellow Korean reporters? If only Lufthansa understood Koreans' unique culture.

King Baeksu said...

Let's see here:

1. An inflammatory, sensationalistic title that is not backed up by facts or evidence in the main body of the text? Check.

2. Lots of half-baked, groundless speculation and not a single attempt to interview any of the parties involved in the "story"? Check.

3. Promotion of domestic Korean brands at the expense of their foreign competitors? Check.

4. A self-hating, race-based view of the world that distorts and overdetermines the writer's ethnonationalist narrative at the expensive of objectivity and impartiality? Check.

5. A mountain made from a molehill, a tempest brewed in an Insa-dong teapot, because the writer is too shallow and self-absorbed to actually write about something relevant and significant in the world, preferring instead to lazily follow all the other lemmings in the Korean media who have already written about the same damn thing?

I don't see what the problem is here. By the standards of South Korean "journalism," Kim Ji-hyun is already ready for the big time here. A plum assignment at Chosun Ilbo, Hankyoreh or MBC awaits her!