Korean Job Discussion Forums

[dg611]

This is in response to an article in the Korea Times. I sent a letter to the editor but he obviously doesn't care. So, I put it here in case anyone else does.

Is there a Caucasian Mystique?

Daniel Hong recently wrote an article titled ��The Asian Female Mystique�� that was published in the Korea Times on 27 May, 2005. The writer discuses how he was influence by Sheridan Prasso, author of ��The Asian Mystique�� at a lecture at the University of Washington. To be fair to the book in question, Prasso makes some good points about the modern stereotypes of Asians and her book may be compelling reading and has received several positive reviews. However, the problem with this article was not the book or its author but with the article itself and its alleged author.
Mr. Hong, after his revelation at the Prasso lecture, rails on the stereotypes of Asians found in western culture and how the stereotypes must be dealt with, yet he endorses stereotyping of western culture and especially western men who ��chase after�� Asian women; designating them to the bottom of western dating and social barrel. He bolsters his racist and quite inappropriate questions by quoting Prasso as agreeing with his view. It seems strange and suspicious that the only place in the article where the writer actually quotes himself is full of grammatical errors that draw into question the true authorship of this otherwise well-written article. Indeed, parts of the article were blatantly plagiarized while others were only slightly changed from the May 22, 2005, Los Angeles Times article titled ��The Butterfly Effect.�� It is just unfortunate that the Korea Times was duped into printing such plagiarism.
So, now we are left with some questions: Did this alleged conversation with Brasso actually occur? How can we trust the words of an author who claims another��s words as his own? We might be suspicious that such a person might claim a conversation that never happened as well. Perhaps Ms. Prasso will have chance to read this and comment on the veracity of the author��s use of her name and words.
Prasso and Hong both make use of stereotypes as the basis for their writing. Prasso discusses the stereotypes that westerners have of Asians and some of the problems associated with those stereotypes. Hong, however, simply borrows (scratch that, steals) Prasso��s views in order to attack a subset of westerners for which he has obvious distain. The difference here is that the former is provocative and compelling for the intelligent reader and the later is racist and offensive.
Finally, Mr. Hong��s final words (if they are indeed his) are poignant enough to help alleviate some of the offense caused by his overtly pointed article. ��In spite of the plethora of stereotypes, in final analysis, we still need to define ourselves individually.�� However, to this I add John Donne��s, ��No man is an island.�� We all fit into someone��s stereotype..

[chance2005]

[dg611]

I guess it just irks me that this Hong guy just plagerized most of this article and the KT just printed it without any question...I don't know...maybe the editor chose that article because he thinks like Hong. Either way, the fact that the KT didn't print my article either means they didn't read it, they dont care or they don't want to fess up to printing plagiarism that could have been caught with a simple web search.

[julian_w]

dg611

Well written! Good close reading and analysis.

I was pretty naffed by that article too, and am glad you had the time to sit down and put a solid answer to it. I completely agree it sucks that KT don't have the mana/ honour to print it as a reply (... yet. When did you submit it? Sometimes these things take time...)

For my two cents worth; I like to look at stuff in a positive way:

I'm really happy whenever I see an AwwG
(Asian babe With her White Guy),
no matter how much one person or another may describe the aesthetic value attributable to the first-impression appearance of one of the said party.

Equally, by the same token, I also feel really happy for the other sort of AwwG (Asian bloke With White Girl) ... if not more so.

"Why are you so happy upon such a sighting, Julian!?" I hear you asking. Gentle reader, let me explain it thusly:

By the simple appearance of togetherness in public, such couples are affecting change. No, of course it's not (likely to be a conscious) political decision to be making a political statement by being seen together in public; however, it does create a frission, an impact - it's hard not to notice... and thence wonder at the relationship in a completely irrelevant way uninformed way - and as such the appearance of such couples in such a severely homogenous society as Korea is by default a challenge to the status quo in the minds of those poor unfortunates who have either not experienced interracial love themselves, or have not the imaginative powers to lend to being able to validate it in their own minds. Being challenged to think differently is the first step to actually thinking differently, and thinking differently naturally preceeds acting differently.

(Jeeze... heh...; how's that for a bit of rationalising...?! Anyone still here..?)

This is still, I realise, thinking from an entirely modern/western-romantic notion that because a couple is, it's because of 'lurrve'. I don't know about you, but the cool thing about growing up in the city I did is that I've met bunches of different people from different origins, and with different ways of life. One Greek-Kiwi woman I met at teachers' college in Aotearoa - NZ had a traditional arranged marriage, as did another Vietnamese-Kiwi guy. They're not mixed marriages (racially), but what I'm saying is that unless you know the people enough for them to tell you about it, this example of being different from the majority of society is not so obvious.

The most interesting example of an obvious mixed marriage I know of is with a whitie-Kiwi bloke whom I met years ago, and who, while in his mid-twenties, decided to get "one of them mail-order brides from the Phillipines."

So, he did.

This guy is tall, I guess may be considered pretty handsome ( - I'm a het. guy so don't feel qualified to comment, but I'm pretty sure he's not but't-ugly - ), and has always had a solid job, and has always seemed healthy enough (was one of the top-qualified instructors in the taekwon-do scene). When I asked him why, he seemed pretty frank and honest about it all, and simply replied something like: "I just want to get on with it."

I guess he meant he just couldn't be bothered with the whole dating thing, chasing after romantic ideals. So, he arranged his own arranged marriage. Fair enough. Makes a bit of sense, really. Yeah, I don't know him well enough to comment on the quality of marriage, but last I heard they were doing fine, and they've got a couple of kids at primary school now.

My bottom-line point is that unless you know the couple reallybloody well, to risk comment on their relationship is just a sign of ignorance and arrogant pressumption; and, as any happy couple hopefully has the gumption to tell anyone who hassles them for it, it's no-one else's dog-gam business anyway.

Cheerio!

[paperbag princess]

dg611 well written and thought out response. from what i understand, the korean times is subject to the same confucian model that the rest of korea suffers from; the old-timers refuse to have their work edited, as they as senior writers, cannot bear to be edited by the younger foreign copy editors. i wouldn't be surprised that they wouldn't run your LTE as that would cause all sorts of "saving face" issues for mr. hong. anyway, as far as the times is concerned, it's very poorly written, my students pick out errors all the time.

[dg611]

I suspected the confucian thing too...but the guy is said to be a 'writer' from seattle...and from the name one would assume he might be korean-american but the grammatical errors suggest he is not a native speaker. And in my opinion, there is no way that he wrote that article. Plagiarizers (and I've seen it a lot in my uni/college teaching in Korea life) usually quote themselves accurately...meaning they make the mistakes with their own words. This just sent up a red flag and a little investigation turned up the LATimes article.
I would have thought of the time issue too...but I have seen other article replys get printed in just a couple of days.

[Saxiif]

Read that article, for someone who's trying to protest Caucasians stereotyping Asians it was a bit surreal to hear him spending half the article crudely stereotyping Caucasians.
What an idiot.

[Hanson]

Julian_w wrote:

[chance2005]

[jajdude]

In thousands of years....


Damn I might be a senile old goat by then....

[canukteacher]

Have you ever tried to explain plagarism to a Korean university student? They get it, but they pretend not to. Unfortunately, many Koreans don't see anything wrong with plagarism. Sad but true. A couple of years ago a group of Korean engineers had an article published in an international scientific journal. It was discovered after the fact that large parts of it had been plagarized from another scientists published work. It caused an outrage at the time. Has anything changed? I doubt it.

CT

[Hanson]

Plagiarism is alive & well in Korea. I've had students plagiarise and look confused when I tell them that I won't accept their work. I even had one student who openly admitted to plagiarising. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Where did you get your information about Terry Fox?
Him: From my other class, with XYZ teacher.
Me (showing him XYZ's coursebook): You mean from here?
Him: Yes, that's right.
Me (opening the coursework book to the plagiarised page): What you wrote and what is written here are exactly the same.
Him: Yes, I know, that's where I got it from.
Me: But you can't do that.
Him (genuinely confused): What do you mean?
Me: You can quote from this material, but you can't pass it off as your own.
Him:
Me: You can't copy from another book without crediting the source.
Him: But that book is correct.

[Wishmaster]

Yes, there is a caucasian mystique. Why do Korean spend exorbitant amounts of money to make their skin lighter, have cosmetic surgery(ostensibly to appear more "caucasian", etc. I've never heard a white or African-American person back home say, "Gee, I wish I looked Asian. I wished that I looked like Jackie Chan or Jet Li". I've never heard that....

[Moldy Rutabaga]

[Edit]

[Smee]

OP:
Your letter got published here:
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200506/kt2005060716013454070.htm

The original article---The Asian Female Mystique---is here:
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200505/kt2005052718411054060.htm