"Welcome to Korea!"
Read this post I made over at the Marmot's Hole about what the Korean press corps tried to do to RUN-DMC.
I attended that press conference and was totally disgusted with how the Korean press corps not only asked the question -- and what did they expect this American entertainer in Korea for the first time to know about a hot-button political issue that has nothing whatsoever to do with what he does or why he came to Korea in the first place -- but they pushed THREE times to get a "clearer" answer (i.e. the one they wanted to hear).
Is it really this bad? If Pak Se-ri went went to France and the French press corps grilled her for what she thought of the behavior of Muslim youth and the meaning of the rioting there, I'd rightfully be like "WTF?"
I don't know how well I am conveying the feel and granularity of the atmosphere over here, but the attitude on the streets these days is simply ridiculous. The only thing that bothers me is that when the ludicrousness of much of individual and collective behavior is pointed out, there will be no sense of ownership for how dumb one's own thoughts or actions were, which will therefore not lead to any introspection, which will therefore mean no one will have really learned from the experience.
The atmosphere is one of intellectual thuggery -- oh, and physical thuggery as well. Christ in Heaven -- one of the nicest guys I know was stabbed last week, requiring 42 STAPLES to the arm that he instinctively raised to protect his ribcage, which is where the broken bottle wielded by one of his two Korean assailants was aimed.
People say that I am losing perspective because of all these acts of violence being committed on friends and acquaintances of mine, a sudden rise in just the last 1-2 years. But I would pose another idea: perhaps this is a justifiable concern, considering the rise in stories of anti-violence I hear through the grapevine, the sheer number of cases of victims whom I personally know (and have seen their casts, bandages, or scars), and the seemingly concomitant rise in outright racist/violent representations of foreigners in the media here.
It isn't a radical argument, really: that foreigners are the easy "whipping boy" of a society that increasingly represents them as criminal threats to "their" women, children, and even safety on the streets. YTN reports of the streets not being safe, that we bring "AIDS", or any combination of idiotic representations that would cause Koreans to absolutely LOSE IT if such representations of Koreans were in currency in American media today.
And for apologists for all this -- at what point do you cut a culture slack for not having societal experience dealing with Otherness, and at what point do you have to just call racism and violence what it is?
And now, do we REALLY have to drag hapless guests into all this? Like an entertainer who said BEFORE being grilled about grilling meats that he does NOT like POLITICS or DIVISIVE ideologies, and that his love for hip hop comes out of the common ground it creates between the cultures it permeates?
Was the Korean press corps even FUCKING LISTENING? Obviously not, as they tried to drag DMC into probably the most politically charged issue in Korea right now, knowing FULL WELL how sensitively his words would be parsed, even as they also knew he knew ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about this particular issue.
GREAT setup, guys. If you're going to ask a pointed question, like the one I did during the press conference, at least relate it to HIP HOP and the music the entertainer actually PERFORMS. Because that's why he's here -- NOT to talk about the details of the KORUS FTA and the politics of US beef imports.
I am calling the members of the press who not only asked the question, but pushed it so hard that the Hard Rock rep had to ask them to stop, INTELLECTUAL BULLIES and of questionable journalistic ethics. And when I post the MP3 of it, I will try to find out which paper asked what, name them here, and email them a copy of this URL.
When will Korean folks realize that such selfish and disrespectful behavior, in the end, only hurts Korea? Possibly turning a performer completely off on Korea for a SOUND BITE? Seriously -- I wasn't pissed as much because I was being defensive of DMC as an American as much as I was EMBARRASSED FOR KOREA.
For those who missed it, here's the resultant news story from NoCut News. I comment on it in-depth on the Marmot's Hole.
"DMC says 'In the importation of American beef…the safety of the people is most important.'"
Jeez.
