Lee Jin-woo at the Korea Times is probably my favorite reporter on politics in Korea. His reports usually give enough background and in-depth coverage for them to be very useful for my political data blog.
But style points must be awarded to this piece run in the JoongAng last week by Kang Joo-an and Kim Soe-jung. They start off with a nice little headline and subheadline:
Conservatives apoplectic at unification nominee
But Uri responds, ‘Even leftists need jobs’
The fun does not stop there. Just check out these lines:
Im Jong-seok, an Uri Party legislator and member of the National Assembly’s unification committee, may have been serious but perhaps was tweaking the conservatives’ tails…
Braced by an opposition lawmaker at the hearing, [Lee Jae-joung] pleaded a need to be diplomatic in a public forum about an ill-tempered regime he would have to deal with.
But the Grand Nationals still sputtered.
I will have to be on the lookout for more from these two. They are doing reports in a foreign language with style. That has got to be worth at least a few cool points.
4 Comments
Guess you should thank the enterprising Copy Editor. Knowing Korean reporters in the three domestic English rag’s, very few of them can string a proper sentence!
Very true Browniepoints.
English copy editors at these rags not only heavily edit/rewrite many of these Korean reporters’ articles, they also write all the headlines and subheaders/kickers.
Foreign editors for these rags have the thankless task of turd-polishing strings of cliches, unresearched “facts” (esp. when it comes to the perennial favorites, “crimes by foreigners on the increase” and “SOFA is unfair) and gov’t propaganda from officials that always speak “on condition of anonymity.” There is no real reporting in Korea to speak of.
As one of the above-mentioned cubicle drones - Thank you gentlemen!