The Marmot’s Hole

Since the launch, things are really heating up down here on Earth. I’ve been getting extremely positive responses from non-Koreans to the Yi Soyeon videos, and I generally think the reaction amongst many Korean women is positive. My Ewha FLHS girls, for example, are enamored of her.

However, certain Korean netizens are forming an attack army of nasty comments, mostly talking about how “ugly” she is, how this is a waste of tax money, and finally, since the publication of a misleading DongA.com article about her, how she is really a “CF Queen” (commercial queen), gone to space to get rich.

What the article did was lift quotes from the first video — which was shot 2 years prior and when she had only made the final 30 — without actually linking to or even attributing it properly so that people could see it for themselves. Then the article led with the quote “I’m going to buy an apartment for my mother as a present!” ( “돈 벌어 엄마한테 아파트 선물”) upon becoming famous. She also said she’d donate money to her school and foundations for scientific research, but those key points were left out.

Also left out was the fact that she also jokingly said that she would promote my web sites and podcasts when she got famous. I didn’t get the sense that her main goal in going into the program was to promote SeoulGlow.com, nor did I hear her plugging the web site in any ISS communications. It’s about as ridiculous to say she went into this program to buy her mom a house as it would be to say she did it as a publicity stunt for some foreigner’s online video magazine. But leave it to the Korean media to omit, distort, and fail to properly attribute to the point of completely misrepresenting the truth.

What the article did was 1) misleadingly lead any reader to believe that the interviews were conducted recently, after she had become the final candidate, 2) actually misquote her, since some of what is in quotes is not what she said, and 3) by not attributing the source so people could see for themselves that they were misquotes taken completely out of context and actually 2 years ago, make people completely unable, unless they are one of the few thousand who’ve actually seen the videos themselves, to see that the article is full of horse doody. Of course, the twisting of truth going on in that article seems to depend on not having actually seen the source material, but…

In short, it was a hit piece, and completely lacking in any basic journalistic ethics or basic moral integrity. I wrote a more lengthy article on my own blog about it, with the name of the reporter, the telephone numbers of the newsdesks at Donga that keep giving me the runaround, and even the weepy apology of the reporter himself, who promises to change the article and make corrections…and it’s been 2 days now. I feel smoke has been blown up my ass.

Mostly thanks to this article, some netizens are calling her the “CF Queen” and I feel absolutely disgusted by this, since I made this video. Even though the vid’s been up for more than a year now, and Soyeon herself, as well as her buds at NASA and in the space community, have all seen and liked the video, who knew it could be so deliberately twisted to the point that it has been?

I am planning to adapt a shorter version of my blog piece into a story on Ohmynews.com attacking back, and pointing out all the errors and distortions in the article. I am also hoping that any of you who might be interested will keep the heat on for the DongA.com people to print a correction and to clarify the nature of the source from which so many of their article’s quotes came from.

I feel sick to my stomach about this and will do my best to fight the main source of the bullshit. I would take the video down, but I think it stands better as a record for what was actually said, and if it suddenly disappeared, it would tend to confirm any suspicions about the evil intents of the “commercial queen,” anyway. Plus, it’s already out there, in tens of thousands of iPods and several Korean UCC sites, not to mention YouTube. It wouldn’t really disappear, anyway.

If any of you are so inclined to pressure DongA.com to rectify the situation and at least properly attribute their source, please do travel over to my longer version of this post and get the information so you can make a few calls or write a letter. I can understand that there will be assholes in any bunch of people, but an article twisting the truth enough to earn the moniker “CF Queen” takes the cake.

Also, if there is anyone in the international media who would like to do a story on how nasty Korean netizens are being to one of their own, I would be more than happy to describe the situation to you. I’m deleting a couple of nasty comments an hour, it seems, on the YouTube videos in question, with the comments in Korean usually being full of curses and slurs, even as international commenters are nearly, down to the person, 100% behind her and think it’s a great thing to see a Korean woman go into space.

The specifics of the DongA.com article aside, it baffles even cynical old me just how vitriolic many Korean netizens are when it comes to Soyeon, who is probably one of the most selfless and dedicated people I’ve ever met in my life. Since I’m inevitably involved with some of the garbage being spewed out about her, I’m going to do my best to make sure the origins of the nastiness get exposed for what they are — pure garbage, which has nothing to do with anything Soyeon said or implied.