[Wōdnes-dæg] On Education, Work, and Passion

Introduction
Troubled Times for Work
Closing

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Introduction

Today’s editorial isn’t based on any one article so much as it is on experience and general reading.

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Troubled Times for Work

Those currently in their 20s are media darlings, in their own strange way. No, we aren’t all starring in a hip new TV show or sporting roles as extras in an upcoming movie of tremendous importance. Instead, we’re bucking the trend that’s been accepted and unquestioned practice in the Western world for centuries.

Many of us who have taken the road of education to get where we are are not quite where we expected ourselves to be. We’re living with our parents and/or working a job that doesn’t require our university or college-acquired knowledge possibly to pay off debt incurred by that education. If you’re in your 20s, chances are, at least one of those is true for you – possibly even all three are.

Reading through articles found on my own and passed onto me by friends and family, it seems that society as a whole is quite disturbed by this. Post-secondary-educated youth living with their parents into their late 20s? Humanities majors and masters serving coffee and waiting tables? Massive debt holding the youth back? The second question may not be anything new, but it’s still mentioned consistently enough.

Yet, as direly scarce as fitting employment may be and as impossible as the prospects of following the old “high-school –> post-secondary –> work” life model appear, this doesn’t necessarily mean that society is in crisis. Rather, it’s in the middle of an opportunity.

As difficult as it can be to stride through debt, go back to living with your parents, or to work a job that you could’ve been hired for fresh out of high school, the old life model’s being disrupted gives those of us in these situations the chance to do something different. It gives us all a chance to step back and to really ask what we want to do with ourselves and what we need to do in order to get there.

The economy is still stabilizing, and the job market is as rocky as ever. But passion is as important as ever, and it’s something that can be started anywhere, even if you’re not working in the safe and secure 9-5 style job that the old life model dictates. It’s strange, and it can be frightening, but we’ve gone off model and it’s for the better.

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Closing

Check back here on Friday for a journey amidst ribald jokes looking for gems in Your Highness.

And, in the meantime, be sure to check out my video game writing here.

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Annotated Links #10: Massaging Media

1. Chung-Un, Cho. “‘Focus on human nature, not unique cultural aspects’.” The Korea Herald 18 July 2012. Web. 24 July 2012.

Robert McKee explains why he finds Korean film so intriguing. He also highlights the importance of speaking to human nature rather than cultural elements in stories intended for an international audience. This article is part reportage, part interview between McKee and the Korea Herald. It is written in a straightforward style with only some minor typos.

2. Dvorsky, George. “How An Alien Invasion Inspired Kevin J. Anderson to Start Writing Science Fiction.” io9 16 July 2012. Web. 24 July 2012.

Kevin J. Anderson’s accomplishments are listed, and it’s noted that his novelization of Rush’s Clockwork Angels is due out in September. Included is a long quote about Anderson’s seeing the War of the Worlds movie lead him to writing science fiction. The article is written in a light, direct style.

3. MSumm. “Dear Nintendo, Please Give Me a Zelda Game Tougher Than Majora’s Mask.” Kotaku 17 July 2012. Web. 24 July 2012.

A rant/letter directed at the major players at Nintendo, asking for a new Zelda game that is as difficult as Majora’s Mask. MSumm considers Majora’s Mask difficult because of its utter lack of hand-holding and un-skippable tutorials. Difficulty is sought because beating such a game grants the player a great feeling of satisfaction. This article is posted from Kotaku’s “Speak Up” forum, so there are some typos and grammatical errors. The article’s style is quite casual.

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Closing

Tomorrow, watch this space for an editorial entry, and don’t miss Annotated Links #11 on Thursday! Then, come Friday, the final part of Nicolas Cage month, a quest to find the good in Seeking Justice, will be posted.

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[Moon-dæg] Two Takes on North Korea – Part 4

Recap & Introduction
The Same
Basic Differences
Differences in War
Truly Curious
Wrap Up
Closing

{Where is that camera pointed, and what will it see? Image from the Agnes Kunze Society Hope Project website.}

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Recap & Introduction

Two weeks ago we looked at how the North American media reacted to the Bombardment of Yeonpyeong. Last week, we looked at the South Korean treatment of the same. So what’s the same? What’s different? And what can be told from all that? Let’s find out.

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The Same

Both North American and South Korean news sources covered the Five Ws: Who, What, When, Where, Why. This is practically a given, but an important thing to lay down. So both sources reported the facts, in one way or another. However, aside from this, there aren’t many remarkable similarities between these two sets of articles.

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Basic Differences

North American coverage often buried its facts in analysis, and this analysis was always the core of the story. Why was Yeonpyeong bombarded? What was the North’s motivation for doing it? What does it all mean?

Because of this, North American news sources were much more likely to trumpet various conclusions: the North was growing hostile and dangerous, it was a show of power to help usher in Kim Jong Un’s ascension to power, it was deeply related to North Korea’s growing nuclear testing and supposed capabilities.

On the other hand, South Korean news sources stuck closer to the facts. They reported what happened, and sometimes added in extra details for various effects: official statements, personal anecdotes, etc.

Plus, no real assumptions were made in any of the South Korean sources looked at. Since the event directly affected them, South Koreans were more concerned, or interested in, what the attack meant for them specifically and what their leaders had to say about it.

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Differences in War

Curiously, though, none of the three North American sources that were looked at cited Kim Tae-Young, the South Korean Defense Minister, replied to a question about being at war by saying “Didn’t it start already? We must stop it from expanding.”

Since this quote appeared in an article from 23 November 2010, it wouldn’t have been difficult to work it into the slew of stories that came out around the incident. And it even has an action movie kind of a ring to it. But perhaps this omission speaks the loudest to the difference of the two in their coverage of the event.

Not including the quote suggests that it wasn’t deemed newsworthy over here. Even though it is a reflection of present reality in the Koreas – an armistice was signed, but there never was a peace treaty. So, technically, the Korean War carries on, though in a definitely colder sort of way.

But that’s not how North Americans see war. Even something like the Cold War strikes fear into the hearts of many, and for the most part that fear was the product of the media.

The people of South Korea didn’t need to speculate about Kim Jong Il’s plots or ploys or machinations behind the bombardment. They just viewed it as the tragic even that it was and declared it an action that is unforgivable and spoke of how it’s necessary to keep things from getting worse.

But those are the people in power, those completely unaffected by it might have hardly blinked at the story – the same way that something about a shooting in a different part of the country might cause the average North American to simply turn to the next page in the paper, or to scroll onward to the next story.

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Truly Curious

This also illuminates another essential difference between reporting styles. For better or worse, the North America news media is all about finding out the “why” of an incident, whereas South Korea news media seems to be more about the “what.”

While the articles that have been looked at are about the same length, North American coverage dwelled on speculation about motivation, and South Korean sources focused on just what happened and how it effected the people involved.

But that’s exactly it. That’s why the media can inspire so much fear in North America – because it works on the imagination. It relies on thinking of things that may or may not be true, and the human imagination is ingenious at scaring the human wielding and/or listening to it.

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Wrap Up

So, at heart, the difference between the two is really the North American media’s social curiosity calling itself out.

North American news doesn’t just look into the abyss and paint a picture of what it sees, it stares into it with all of the steady focus of an open-eyed stone gargoyle and all the tenacity of a determined squirrel. And nothing can terrify like that which looks back from the abyss, especially when it’s put under so much scrutiny it could be called duress.

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Closing

Check back here on Wednesday for a look at the newest news, and on Friday for another search for the good in a terrible movie.

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[Moon-dæg] Two Takes on North Korea, Part 3

Recap & Introduction
The Korea Herald
The Chosun Ilbo
The JoongAng Daily
Wrap Up
Closing

{Smoke rises from Yeonpyeong Island. Image from The Korea Herald.}

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Recap & Introduction

Today’s entry takes a look at the Korean coverage of the Bombardment of Yeonpyeong, a maritime skirmish between North and South Korea that happened on 23 November 2010.

In last week’s overview of the North American coverage of this event, all of the news outlets looked at included fairly extensive analysis of their reports. There were points raised about how the incident fit in with the impending ascension to power of Kim Jong Il’s son Kim Jong Un, and the incident also offered the chance to mention North Korea’s continuing nuclear experimentation.

Let’s see if coverage in South Korea is any different.

The three news outlets featured (The Korea Herald, The Chosun Ilbo, and The Joongang Daily) are all considered major South Korean papers, and each has a distribution of at least 1.96 million.

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The Korea Herald

The article from The Korea Herald wastes no time getting to the facts. It begins with a quick outline of the incident, and moves onto more facts and reports from relevant sources. However, this article does talk about how tensions were high since the sinking of the Cheonan on 26 March 2010, and states that a “Seoul-led multi-national investigation team” had since concluded that North Korea was entirely responsible for the sinking of the corvette.

There are also passages like those about the shelling happening after South Korea’s exercises were finished, and that South Korean experts on North Korea expected North Korea to extend the olive branch rather than the bayonet to help stabilize themselves on the eve of power passing from Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un. Crowning these statements, though, is a single paragraph:

“Foreign press quickly reported the attack as a major news, producing a flurry of interpretations about the motive of North Korea. Reuters quoted an expert as saying that the attack is “unbelievable.””

Interestingly, South Korean media was much slower to produce it’s own interpretations of the event.

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The Chosun Ilbo

The article from the The Chosun Ilbo is originally in Korean, and the translation offered by Microsoft’s translation service is decent, but not entirely clear.

Nonetheless, from the translation it’s plain that the attack was unsuspected. The article also notes that North Korea’s actions put it squarely in the wrong in the eyes of the UN, and even suggests that the armistice between the two Koreas has been broken.

On the matter of war re-igniting between the two nations, though, the article is apparently quiet.

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The JoongAng Daily

Just like The Korea Herald article, this one from the The JoongAng Daily starts with a summary of events. Curiously, this includes the number of shots fired by North Korea, and the casualties and wounded on the South Korean side – both military and civilian.

Also interesting, is that this article includes the relation of a local who fled her home when the shelling shattered her windows.

The article also goes the most in depth of the three on the question of war reigniting. It notes that Joint Chiefs of Staff set the country to the highest level of military alertness. Even the Defence Minister, Kim Tae-Young, is brought into it as he is reported as answering a question about war breaking out with: “Didn’t it start already? We must stop it from expanding.”

The article winds down with a myriad of voices. These run from the South Korean Democratic Party and their call for co-operation with the ruling Grand National Party, to Japan on the tension between the nations, to China’s call for caution, and to Reuters’ reporting on the attack causing the Hong Kong stock exchange to suffer significant losses. But, going the furthest to prove its uniqueness among these three articles is the article’s final paragraph.

In this paragraph it is stated that 11 days before the attack on Yeonpyeong, North Korea had been showing an American nuclear scientist its uranium enrichment facilities.

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Wrap Up

All in all, then, the local reporting on the incident offers quite a different take on the Bombardment of Yeonpyeong. Rather than the hunt for a motive and speculation on said motive found in North American coverage, there’s a much greater emphasis on facts. Any kind of elaboration on them is left entirely up to the reader.

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Closing

Check back here next week for Part 4 of this series, an analysis of the difference between these reporting styles and some reasons and theories for that difference.

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[Moon-dæg] Two Takes on North Korea, Part 2

Background
CNN
CBC
TIME
Closing

{A caricature of Kim Jong Il by David Baldinger.}

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Background

The Bombardment of Yeonpyeong is the latest military incident between North and South Koreas which raised tension on both sides. Apparently, North Korea did not want South Korea to go through with a training exercise that they had planned for November 23rd, 2010, however, South Korea ignored the North’s cease request, and so they attacked the island barracks.

Yet, the incident also goes deeper than just a single ignored request.

The maritime border between the two countries has been contentious for quite some time. Since 1973, in fact, when North Korea redrew the border on the heels of the redefinition of “territorial waters” from 3 nautical miles to 12. However, South Korea and the UN continued to only recognize the border they had drawn up at the end of the Korean War (1952).

Because the idea is to limit each of these four parts to as few words as possible, only three major news outlets will be examined: CNN, the CBC, and TIME. The first and the last of these are American outlets, while the second is Canada’s national channel. Though small, the purpose of this range of news outlets is to get a general cross-section of how the issue was treated.

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CNN

CNN presents a fairly balanced portrayal of the event. The news outlet constantly quotes sources that are representative of the groups that it’s making statements about. However, the way that it deploys these quotations is interesting.

On the one hand, the Koreas and the US are quoted more or less in full sentences or phrases that read naturally as parts of a statement.

On the other, the presentation of some quotes from Hong Lei of the Chinese government is quite different. The man is quoted three times, and two of these are placed to seem euphemistic. This is the sentence in question: “Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China had ‘taken note of relevant reports’ and expressed its ‘concern.’” The quote that follows this sentence in the article is on par with the others, but this selective quoting suggests that China’s integrity is being called into question.

The CNN article also takes the chance offered by reporting on the bombardment to note that North Korea, days earlier, had made it public that they had built a new nuclear plant.

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CBC

The CBC approaches the story in a similarly straightforward manner, but makes no real mention about the nuclear tie-in. Instead, it is just a general overview of what the incident means for Obama, of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s response, and of Canada’s and the UN’s reactions policy-wise.

There is a twist, though. Rather than revealing the entire incident and then reporting on the details, the article takes a backwards approach. It reports on the details first and then, at the end of each of its sections, presents the basics of what happened. It’s a strange method that emphasizes the outcomes rather than the incident itself, as if the CBC is trying to say that it’s not going to judge what happened, only what’s resulted.

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TIME

The article published on TIME’s website, is very clearly from a magazine rather than a newspaper. For, despite the incident’s serious nature, the TIME article presents North Korea as a kind of dangerous clown at both its beginning and end. It also uses some fiery rhetoric, referring to the attack as “commenc[ing] a fusillade of artillery fire,” and outrightly calling it a “bombardment” (which is a little bombastic, but makes sense since North Korea fired 170 shells at the island).

TIME’s treatment of the nuclear aspect is also vamped up as it is stated that, according to US intelligence, North Korea already has 8 to 12 nuclear bombs. Interestingly, though, rather than just connecting the bombardment and North Korea’s revelation of its new nuclear plant, the TIME article suggests that these two incidents are part of Kim Jong Un’s training to be North Korea’s next leader.

Nonetheless, just like the CNN article, China is also painted as vaguely sinister, though with a bit of a broader brush. The article states that China’s reaction to the incident was delivered with “a blandness that approached indifference.”

Despite the lack of explicit fear-mongering in these articles, it’s interesting that the two of American origin mention North Korea’s newest nuclear capabilities and frame China as being a player in the incident, but a very aloof one. The mention of nuclear power definitely calls back to fears of nuclear war, and the portrayal of China just coolly looking on while the incident happened suggests that the country is lax on politically tough calls.

The lack of these two aspects in the CBC article suggests that American coverage is more sensational and more about making a story of something rather than reporting on the facts of something.

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Closing

Next week, we’ll see what South Korea itself has to say. As per the rest of the week, this blog will not have any new entries. So, until 4 June rolls around, you can check out older articles in this blog or my translation blog at tonguejar.blogspot.ca.

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[Moon-dæg] Two Takes on North Korea – Part 1

Preamble
Two Takes on North Korea – Part 1

Preamble

I’ve decided to change the format for Monday’s entries.

Instead of a series that includes four different entries (one that lays out all the facts, one that attempts a logical approach, one that looks for “truthiness,” and then one final entry that returns to logic), each four part Moon-dæg series will now be a standard length essay of 2000 words split into four parts.

Periodically, short stories and poetry cycles/mini-epic poems might also be posted, so be sure to keep reading.

All of that said, onto the first of the new format four-part series, an opinion on modern perceptions of North Korea.

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Two Takes on North Korea – Part 1

{One of the few allowed to look out from the Hermit Kingdom. Photo taken by Marcella Bona}

North Korea, from a political standpoint, is a strange remnant from the post-WWII era, and really, in some ways, the last vestige of the Cold War. The Berlin Wall fell, the USSR collapsed. Nuclear power continues to be a problem both as a source of energy and as a weapon, but it’s something that nations at least have a handle on. Sanctions are in place where needed, and most countries take these sanctions seriously. Not so much North Korea, according to this Australian Federal Police (AFP) article from 21 May.

However, North Korea’s recent failed rocket launch has caused it to lose face internationally. Nonetheless, and as that AFP article points out, North Korea will try again. And this persistence is in the face of more and more information coming to light about the country’s regime and living standard.

Two examples of these information leaks are Guy Delisle wrote and illustrated a graphic novel called Pyongyang, all about his time working for an animation studio in the North Korean capital and Mike Kim‘s Escaping North Korea: Defiance and Hope in the World’s Most Repressive Country.

As it is now, North Korea is seen as a place of social backwardness, starvation, and demoralization. But there’s a curious angle on this story if you go south of the North’s border.

In South Korea, even in the capital of Seoul (just about 35 miles (56 km) from the border between the two Koreas) people seem almost indifferent to their Northern neighbor. In fact, it’s more likely for South Koreans to express a wish for reunification in some form or another than to say that they feel hounded by a constant nagging fear.

The case that will be made over the next three Monday entries is that the disparity between the South Korean and North American view of North Korea is a lingering result of the Cold War. Not necessarily directly, but in the sense that the North American news media has wakened to the importance of finding and pleasing a target audience.

Most young people get their news from blogs, websites, or specialized channels, whereas most of those over the age of 40 get their news from television, radio, and newspapers. The old means of getting news are well aware of this demographic shift and have no intention of letting their base demographic – the Baby Boomers – lose interest in what they have to say. Thus, as a means of replicating the same kind of fear that many Boomers are familiar with from the cold war conventional news media try to play up the fear angle in their coverage of North Korea.

The next two entries in this series will look at the tone and style of coverage of the Bombardment of Yeonpyeong, and through these investigations attempt to show that conventional North American media spins such stories for their fear effect.

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