Tag: Korea Times

You have got to like how the Korea Times equates President Trump with someone like Kim Jong-un who maintains a system of slave labor camps, regularly threatens to turn Seoul into a Sea of Fire, carries out mass executions of political rivals to include his own uncle and older brother, and is the chief person responsible for the suffering and poverty of North Koreans:

Oh Young-jin the chief editorial writer at the Korea Times is at it again.  This time he wrote an editorial titled “Ugly Foreigners” that described three cases of road rage in Korea involving foreigners.  For those that don’t know the ROK recently implemented a new law that made road rage incidents like the one described illegal.  The article is actually good information for foreigners living in Korea to know.  However, there was no need to give the editorial that title so to me it seems that Mr. Oh published the title as click bait which has worked.  Now the Korea Times has been flooded with emails accusing Mr. Oh of racism.  Oh has actually had to publish not one, but two editorials defending himself against racism.  What I continue to love about Mr. Oh is not his penchant for click bait articles, but the fact that he continues to use the email address of foolsdie5@ktimes.com.  It seems that if Mr. Oh wants people to take him seriously he might want to start with using a professional email address.

The Korea Times has come to the conclusion that they were had by the article that was published recently on their website that included a profile picture of a sex offender.  What I love about the apology is that it written by Oh Young-jin the paper’s chief editorial writer who uses the email addresses “foolsdie@gmail.com and foolsdie5@ktimes.com”.  It seems if you want people to take your paper seriously than using a professional email address would be a start.

We want to explain to our readers three “incidents” regarding articles published on our editorial pages and share our thoughts about them.

The three, in counter-chronological order, include a contributing article which an unidentified person submitted with the mug shot of a registered sex offender; a column with a touch of plagiarism; and a piece about East-West cultural differences. We don’t identify them to prevent copycatting of the first case and to protect their privacy for the second and third cases.

The bogus article was submitted to our paper’s longest-running series of essays that are open with few restrictions to people of all walks of life. This triggered many inquiries and tips from readers, prompting us first to take the photo off our website and then the article after it was obvious beyond any doubt that it was a practical joke.

First, we concluded it was beyond an apology and is inexcusable so we intend to take this occasion as a bitter lesson. As a result, we will double our vetting process and, if necessary, consider resorting to law enforcement authorities if this kind of prank takes place again. This is an effort to protect our paper’s integrity so as to live up to our stated mission of keeping our readers informed to the best of our ability. At the same time, we thank readers for reporting the bogus article to us and sharing their concern. [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link.

The Korea Times ran an opinion article recently by a man named Lawrence McCook who was complaining about Koreans not sitting next to him on the subway:

Every day, I ride the subway to work. People get on, people get off. I get a seat when people leave, then more people get on. Every time, the last seat to get filled is the one next to me.

I don’t smell bad, I shower every morning. I am a handsome American man. So why won’t Koreans sit next to me? Is it because I’m a different skin color than you? If you prick us, do we not bleed? And if you wrong us, shall we not seek revenge?

This bothers me because it is a declaration that you and I are different. We all ride the subway to work, so get over your xenophobia, Korea, and take the seat next to me. Even when all the other seats fill up, Koreans would rather stand than sit next to me for fear of some mythical white male cooties jumping into their bodies through knee-to-knee contact.  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but after reading the article I wouldn’t want to sit next to this guy either if he is going to play 20 questions with everyone sitting next to him.  With that said the Korea Times was probably had by whoever sent this article in under that name:

In this opinion piece published yesterday by a Korean newspaper, writer Lawerence McCook opined about the fact that no one will sit next to him on the subway. This insight into the experience of one expat in Korea can sometimes be helpful in discussing the culture at large, however anecdotal evidence certainly is difficult to extrapolate much from.

What we can extrapolate, is that this is not likely the actual photo of the writer, as it appears to be the same photo as a West Warwick sex offender.  [10 Mag]

You can read the rest at the link, but what I think happened is that someone fooled the Korea Times into printing the article and then included a random sex offender image with it.  Anyone else have any other theories?