Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Hapkido-In]

I wrote this letter to challenge the Korea Herald poster on this board. I am not attacking him in anyway. I am trying to just present my thoughts on the current situation from an angle that may shed some light on things for him. (I hope you all) Enjoy:

An open letter to the Korea Herald:

I have the advantage that my place of employment happens to subscribe to the Korea Herald and being that I�ve always enjoyed reading a news paper, I have taken to reading it on a fairly regularly basis (I miss Saturdays/holidays as I don't work these days).

Here are a few observations that I have made about the newspaper after having read it on a daily basis for the past six months.

First, the quality of the articles immediately sticks out as being substandard at best. Most articles are just filler in that they offer no other information or insight to the event being reported on than what is offered in the title.

In addition to the lack of insightfulness offered by the paper, I find it riddled with spelling errors, grammatical errors and often gibberish (which I assume is from the articles being written on computers that have both English and the HanGul characters and the combination of some English characters with punctuation marks some how spitting out a sequence of non-recognizable Korean characters). Either way, the end result is that the over all presentation of the newspaper comes off as amateur at best.

To continue, the Korea Herald must have a very small target market. How many people are there living in Korea that can speak English well enough to be able to read a newspaper? How many of those are going to subscribe to an English newspaper and then how many are going to subscribe to the Korea Herald when there are alternatives out there? The potential outlook becomes even grimmer when taking into consideration that most of the people who can speak English well enough to read and understand an English newspaper are foreigners who much prefer to read the news on internet sites of their favorite newspapers from their native countries.

My final observation is the way that the newspaper comes off as being anti-foreigner as well as being against native English teachers in Korea. Recently you have you claimed that this is an unfair and unsupported accusation. Well, irony comes in many forms, it seems.

It is my feeling that most of the reports/articles in the Korea Herald which involve foreigners do portray them in a negative light and it seems that I am not alone in my stance. Despite the fact that the Korea Herald officially denies these accusations, one can�t help but to feel that unofficially it�s exactly their intent. How so? Simple, the Korea Herald has called out the �good� foreigners to shine the true light on the situation and dispel false auras floating over our heads.

This infuriates me and is the height of irresponsible journalism. Printing misleading and generalizing articles about the foreign community and then putting the burden of clearing their names upon them? The responsibility of presenting the truth correctly and in an unbiased fashion falls upon the reporters, not those being reported on.

So what conclusion do I draw from all this, maybe it�s a little out there, but maybe it�s not. Looking over all these facts combined, I get the feeling that a relatively amateurish news paper, instead of cleaning up its act and writing insightful, newsworthy articles, chooses to instead print articles that portray foreigners (a large group of people with the English skills strong enough to read a newspaper published in English) in a negative light and then deny doing so but offer an �opportunity� for them to clear their name. Frankly speaking, this seems like a desperate and unprofessional attempt to increase sales and internet traffic for your web page.

[Hyeon Een]

I think you should maybe drop the first five paragraphs. You're making 2 points here. (1) It is a terrible paper and (2) They are bad to foreign english teachers.

I think you should focus your letter on one of the two topics. I would guess that the second is your most pressing concern. The beginning of your letter is just insulting (however much truth there may be therein)

[Eunoia]

Well, that's all well and nice. Dare I point out, however, that it's called the KoreA Herald, not the KoreaN Herald?

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Milwaukiedave]

Good letter, I don't know if I agree with others in terms of editing down the letter. He has a good point about errors in the articles. I buy the Korea Times and have noticed the same thing, so he has a vaild point. Then again, I guess the focus should be on what is most important, which is the accuracy of the articles in terms of the facts.

[flotsam]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Richard Krainium]

Hapkido-In, while I applaud your efforts and mostly agree with your findings, how about some specifics to back up your claims?

For example, in your article on xxx date, you claim that xxx is xxx, which is inaccurate...misleading...ect...

I have to agree with Hyeon Een, you need to focus on one main point and then back it up.

[Zulu]

The letter is fine. Send it in. Rather than smirking at 'unqualified' foreign teachers the Korea Herald staff should perhaps focus on honing their writing skills?

[JongnoGuru]

[RACETRAITOR]

I know a guy who used to work as an editor for the Herald. He said it's very unprofessionally run, and he's glad he's gone. The editorial staff hates foreigners in his words. Their target market is Koreans who can read at that level.

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Qinella]

The last hagwon I was at subscribed to the Junior Herald, which is a miniature newspaper for younger readers. I've never read the real Herald with any regularity, but if their junior version is any indication, their editors seriously need to be replaced. I used to go through each edition with a red pen and circle all the grammatical and spelling mistakes that fell through the editing cracks of this "educational tool".

There was an article in there once about why Koreans should study English. It said that they shouldn't study because English is a good language to learn or has any inherent worth, but rather that studying English can bring more money to Korea.

Lots of articles perpetuating stupid Korean myths like chopsticks and kimchi production being contributing factors to good golf skills.

[Corporal]

I didn't read the whole OP, but it's "lack of insight", not "lack of insightfulness".

[JongnoGuru]