I wish i read Korean well enough to do the same. . . sounds like an interesting exercise.

lol

I tend to get most of my news from Naver.com, but my preferred read is the Dong-A Ilbo — like you said, we choose our papers for their ideological slant (and I happened to slant to the right), and I like their style.

More generally, if one desires to know about Korea, or any nation, he must learn her language to read her press. Too many foreigners presume to speak of Korean affairs without enough knowledge and background. And the same is true of Koreans on American affairs.

I agree, with a caveat that is probably included in your last sentence. Just because you can speak the language doesn’t make you necessarily knowledgeable, either. The fact that I can read Korean newspapers in the vernacular (and, in fact, used to work as a translator for the Chosun Ilbo) doesn’t make me an “expert,” or even knowledgeable, about anything Korea-related. Likewise, many Koreans can read the New York Times in English, but that doesn’t necessarily make them knowledgeable on American affairs.

And #4. ‘the Chosun, JoongAng and Dong-A … If you rely on what those three have to say, you can come away with a very skewed view of things.’ All newspapers are skewed. Everyone knows the political tendencies of a nation’s papers. Need I remind you of the NY Times’ history of ‘balanced reporting’? There is no ‘balanced’ paper. We choose to read a newspaper in large part because of its political tendencies. ( I subscribe to the Joongang Ilbo, and I read the Dong-A, Chosun, and Hankyoreh online.)

More generally, if one desires to know about Korea, or any nation, he must learn her language to read her press. Too many foreigners presume to speak of Korean affairs without enough knowledge and background. And the same is true of Koreans on American affairs.

As for the limited resources, I can testify that many of the people working there were indeed *very* limited, some borderline psych ward cases. When they moved to computers for production — Macs Quadra, yeah! — they transferred the old guys who did the type-setting to the computer room. Scary. The proof-readers were cheapo non-native Koreans, and this still shows, I think.

I met a few brilliant people, who left as soon as they could — one of them is with Bloomberg I think.

I remind myself that I’m about to read comedy whenever I pick one up. The alternative is anger, based on barely or not-all-all hidden racism; There is the prevalent , nationalistic chest thumping on achievements by Koreans or Korea; There is usually a healthy dose of hyperbole, which reminds me of cold war Russians telling us socialist production of heavy industrial items was up 84% in one quarter, for each quarter, from 1957 to 1966..

The economics reporting of them all reminds me of popular mechanics where they tell you what’s happening in science NOW on the cover, and then when you read the article, it’s something that MAY happen in 10 years.
Instead of flying machines, it’s the market share of some Korean chaebol in some sector they’re chasing. OR the technological challenges and R and D prowess that is about to put a Korean firm in the top 3 globally. Little of it will turn out to be true in the end.

IMO they try to balance out all this bullshit by putting , with regularity, some bullshit editorial in that criticizes Korean society in the idiom of a western national. It will invariably be written by a Korean who Bitches as We Would Bitch.Education is poor. Rich poor gap is widening. We do not welcome foreigners. We drink too much in the biz culture.

Then it’s back to the story of how the Korean mechanics team took the world by storm in Helsinki by taking apart and reassembling Ham radios faster than ANYONE else.. hahaha

If only they’d format their articles better and not cause anything but IE to crash from time to time - especially in the features section, which usually has the best, most in-depth articles. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!

As has been noted above, KT has a relatively small readership. They have the sales and resources of a small city paper but are expected to put out a 16-20 page paper in a second language six days a week. That is no easy task on a limited budget.

International wire services can only go so far in filling pages. For example, in today’s KT 19 staff reporters wrote 32 stories (not including editorials and various guest columns).