Colbert responds to accusations that his well-meaning spoof of Rain is somehow meant to as a real (and even "racist") attack. (HT to Lost Nomad)
Here's a nice overview of the whole thing, from a blog called Javabeans. All I have to say is, once again: "이봐! 자기야!"
There's a serious lack of ability to understand irony across the cultural divide – that's clear. What the Korean media should learn to do is better understand this fact before misleadingly reporting that a party meant harm when, no matter what you may personally think of the piece, that is certainly the opposite of what it was meant to do.
It doesn't take much to see that this was pretty clearly an acknowledgement of the slightly unusual fact that a Korean pop star – whom many people in the US likely have still never heard of – grabbed the #1 spot on a list that one would think include mostly names that were household words already.
So Colbert poked a little fun, he bragged while being self-deprecating, and he actually sang in Korean, as opposed to making ridiculous sounds or resorting to real racist stereotyping.
And as for me, the fact that bibimpap has become enough of a household word (really?!) to be the punchline to his first video is simply frickin' awesome, and something I never would have expected to see on a national television talk show.
I was still tripping out over a character in the Pentagon saying "We're in deep kimchi" in the film Executive Decision, which I believe I saw in Korea in 1996, and totally had me wigging for years. I'd say, to the folks concerned about Korea's imagined "image," the country's prominence has come a long way, baby.
