ABC for Bob Woodruff’s latest report from Pyongyang on anti-Americanism in North Korea. Seriously, what was the point? At least Barbara Demick’s much bashed (unfairly, IMHO) interview with a North Korean businessman was interesting to read. But ABC’s piece? I mean, let’s look at the situation, shall we? Even assuming you’re not heading to some pre-arranged Potemkin village, you’re a honkey American reporter accompanied by a “translator” and government minders asking North Korean citizens what they think of the U.S. How would you expect interview subjects to respond when confronted by such a crew? “Well, I guess the U.S. is OK, but I think Bush is wrong to oppose federal funding for stem cell research?”
I’m not accusing ABC or Bob Woodruff of being a Walter Duranty (neither one is), or even that the gist of the report — that the North Korean man-on-the-street hates the United States — is incorrect, but it’s just that if you’re an American news team lucky enough to be granted access to North Korea, there are probably better uses of your limited time.
And a cultural note — Korean names go family name first, followed most times by a two-syllable given name. So Kim Mee Kyong’s family name is Kim, not Kyong. Likewise, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan’s last name is Kim, not Gwan:
In an exclusive interview with ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff, North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan said the country is in the process of building additional nuclear bombs and would neither confirm nor deny the missiles’ ability to hit the United States.
Woodruff is part of an ABC News team recently granted rare access to the country. During the interview, Gwan — the country’s chief nuclear negotiator — spoke openly about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions:
And it continues straight through the interview. I don’t mean to nitpick, but a mistake like that — and it appears to be a regular feature with this series — makes Americans look even more ignorant that we already do. So if you’re reading this, ABC, could you please correct this before I see something like “National Defense Commission Chairman Il.”
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ABC: “There are no American products in the markets and no American programs on television.” Pulitzer Prize material, I tell ya….
Did he seriously say that!? Not exactly an earth-shattering revelation….
The more ajumma the less cost. Potential brides equal less hardship. 5 years and very little money. The whole re-unification process will be very Tim Duncan.
“Journalists” in the USA are (almost) the stupidest people around. Followed closely by people who run from the police, then are surprised they get beaten. Besides, no one watches broadcast tv news anymore - I’m surprised anyone bothered to bring a camera on the trip to NK.
I just finished editing my blog entry on this piece of … news.
I had to go back and delete some of the cuss words I liberally put into the orignial post.
I’ll leave it at that here, because I can’t go back and edit comments I make here……..
ABC Sucks
http://www.koreasojourner.blog....._water.htm
I saw the “Gwan” thing and wondered that myself. Could it be possible, though, that the guy’s given name actually was Kimgye? Maybe a nod to the Great Leader?
Some transcriber at ABC made an honest mistake in writing that, but was wrong to not fact-check it. But I will say it can be confusing. There are a lot of places where the last-given name order is reversed to “Western” style of given-last. The Japanese do this A LOT in Western contexts.
And then, dividing up the given name into two separate syllables as if they are two separate names is another part of the problem. Kim Gye Gwan. Are we to believe people called him Gye? No, his name is Gyegwan (and I suspect it should be spelled Kyegwan).
Even the misguided NAKL calls for people to close up the gap in the given names, dividing them only by an optional hyphen and only when it’s necessary to distinguish between two possible interpretations: Ha-eon versus Hae-on, for example (which are nonsense names, by the way).
It’s not just Gwan [never a ?´€æ°? anyway...]. Other names quoted Kim Mee-Kyong are thereafter shortened as Kyong. The guy’s just an ass.
I actually gave away precious moments of my life to Real Player so that I could watch this before I blogged it. The questions that were not asked are much more illustrative than the ones that were. At one point, as the journos are driving toward the DMZ with their guide, they actually heard gunshots off to the right. No one asked a single question about it.
Since I don’t think these men are stupid or incompetent,
there are two ways to explain this: (1) as the Pulitzer-winning NYT reporter John Burns explained, journalists who want “exclusive” access have a powerful temptation to pitch softball questions; or (2) outright intimidation of journalists who get too inquisitive. This happened to another ABC reporter who visited Pyongyang with the Korean Friendship Assocation several years ago. In his case, they seized all his tapes, busted his equipment, put him under room-arrest, and put him through an interrogation session.
ABC’s report wasn’t completely devoid of interesting content, but I wish they were half as skeptical of the North Koreans as they are at Pentagon news conferences.