Monday, August 02, 2010

Lee Eun-ung not the 'Lee' in the Itaewon article

I was asked yesterday in the comments here by Daeguowl if the 'Itaewon is a paradise for losers' article had been amended, and a quick check revealed it had. It originally read:
The founder of the "citizen's group", Mr. Lee (40) is an English teacher who received a TESOL certificate/diploma in Canada. During a two day interview he explained in detail the truth about Itaewon. Contacting him after a long time, I asked him what the situation was like in Itaewon, and he answered, "Still the same."
It now reads:
Jasminhyang,” who was active in the “citizen’s group” in the past under that ID, is an English teacher who received a TESOL certificate/diploma in Canada. During a two day interview he explained in detail the truth about Itaewon. He said he left the group in 2007. Contacting him after a long time, I asked him what the situation was like in Itaewon, and he answered, "Still the same."
Jasminhyang was indeed a prominent poster at the site for its first few years. I looked over at AES's website and there was a post by Lee Eun-ung (ID 'm2') saying he had not been interviewed by the article followed by another post (first result here):
New Daily article… Who is the person impersonating a cafe manager?
Don’t believe it!

A few months ago at a meeting of ranking members we discussed the fear that someone might impersonate m2. Now this has really happened. It’s a shock.
Jeon Gyeong-ung and New Daily have made a mistake.
The manager in the article is not m2.
None of our cafe managers have TESOL certification or are English teachers.
This is a lie.

Currently our cafe does not comment on activities related to foreigners’ dating and entertainment activities or foreign crime and club culture.
In the comments 'm2' also notes that members who were only concerned with foreigners' dating, the foreign crime problem and club problem separated from the group in 2007.

It seems that many who read the original article assumed the 40 year old 'Lee,' founder of AES, was Lee Eun-ung, and indeed members of AES also worried about this. This is to be expected, of course, considering Lee has always been AES's public face, except when a 'Kim' or 'K' was interviewed for several BreakNews articles in 2006 (though circumstantial evidence suggests that was just a pseudonym for Lee. After this article was posted on AES in late 2007, in the comments, members thanked 'Mr. Kim'. 'M2' - the ID of Lee Eun-ung - coyly wrote "I'm curious about Mr. Kim;..." Of all people it was 'jasminhyang' who left a comment saying "the first letter of Mr. Kim's nickname is 'm'."). The 'Lee, the English teacher with a TESOL degree received in Canada who found it hard to find work' motivation did seem a little too good to be true.

It's also not surprising the newspaper clarified who the source was so quickly - AES will defend its good name if need be (I could swear this image used to be at the top of this article).

You have to enjoy the fact that New Daily clarified sentences that made Lee Eun-ung look bad by attributing to him negative or just plain racist quotes about foreign English teachers, Nigerians and Pakistanis, but otherwise left all of the offensive quotes otherwise intact.

1 comment:

Darth Babaganoosh said...

None of our cafe managers have TESOL certification or are English teachers.

Now there's a shocker.

Currently our cafe does not comment on activities related to foreigners’ dating and entertainment activities or foreign crime and club culture.

Sure, not currently, but that's exactly what they did for the first few years the cafe was in existence. That's ALL they did, to the point of harassing the girls themselves and posting their photos online.