Once again a cartoon published in Korea Times has drawn ire upon the newspaper. Stephane Peray, the cartoonist – based in Thailand – has drawn the criticism of the Hole more than once. Mr. Marmot begged the KT to sack him in February last year (you can see the Australian wild fire cartoon at the blog Idle Wordship) and also in November 2008 (you can see the Bali execution cartoon here at Korea Times).
Of course, Stephane Peray is not new to controversy. This blog declared him as an American Basher and Daryle Cagle’s Political Cartoonists Index gives a large number of his recent drawings – many of which are truly tasteless. But as a political cartoonist isn’t this what is expected of him?
Pravda (April 6, 2010) insists that Korea Times has overstepped itself not once but three times. The first two were as a result of Peray’s cartoons. The first cartoon can no longer be seen on KT’s web page (can be seen here on Windows to Russia) but the second has been included above. One poster named Cornwell wrote:
Making fun of such a tragedy is terrible. I am a Russian and have visited Korea many times. I can not imagine that your readers had a laugh over this pictures. South Korea always seemed a very kind, friendly and hospitable country to me and my colleagues. Now we have seen the other side. As for us, this humour insulted many of us severely. Why be so cruel and heartless? I hope very stronlgy that this silly act does not reflect the attitude of the whole Korean nation.
The resulting uproar has had dire effects, according to Pravda, on Korea Time’s staff:
The administration of The Korea Times, an influential newspaper published in the English language has been fired after the paper published disgusting cartoons mocking the victims of the recent terrorist attacks in the Moscow metro. The publishers fired chief editors of the newspaper after the publication of the second cartoon.
I am not quite sure where Pravda got its information, but from what I have been told no one was fired but some people have been shifted to other positions but not for negative reasons. Pravda also asserts that Korea Times’ website has many people calling upon the Russians to boycott Korean goods. Not sure where the “many” are, but there was this one by Traaansh:
It is simply custom-made clause paid by authorities of the Great Britain. I was disappointed in South-Korean as in the nation. Not for long to them remains. Now, learning about death next South-Korean by any ship or somewhere else, I shall laugh and be pleased that one mongrel became less. I shall never not buy any more Samsung, KIA, Daewoo, LG, Pantech, etc. I call all Russians to not buy production of the South-Korean companies.
The message board at Korea Times seems actually pretty tame as compared to other articles in the past but there is one comment from Moscowzen that does raise an eyebrow or two.
We ought to kill a couple more Korean students in Russia, so it would be really fun and tolerant!
Was this merely an ill-thought out attempt by Korea Times to drum up heated discussion on reader’s chatboard? Not according to Konstantin Asmolov, a senior specialist with the Institute of the Far East of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
“This style of illustrations in South Korean newspapers is not rare. From time to tine the Korean newspapers publish specific cartoons on various disasters in third world countries. The newspaper published the column with the brown bear cartoon on April 2, when Moscow opened a large-scale festival of Korean culture to mark the 20th anniversary since the beginning of the Russian-Korean diplomatic ties. The burning feeling of national pride is very typical of the Koreans. This feeling comes close to a very painful reaction to any similar attacks against Korea,” the scientist said.
The third strike against Korea Times was the article by Gwynne Dyer (Moscow No Common Threat), which Pravda described as “absurd” and suggested that Dyer sought to have the readers “perceive extremists from the Caucasus as fighters for independence rather than terrorists. Mr. Dyer apparently believes that exploding people in the metro is a very good method to fight for independence. If he does, he needs to have his head examined.”
Pravda concludes its article with:
About 200 people were injured in a terrorist act in the subway of the city of Daegu (S.Korea) when a mentally unbalanced individual set a carriage on fire in February 2003. About 200 people were injured in the accident. If a Russian newspaper published a cartoon on the subject, the South Korean government would never leave it out of its attention. However, it did not happen.
The appearance of the above-mentioned cartoons in The Korea Times gives every reason to believe that some political forces in Seoul intend to ruin the progress achieved in the relations between Russia and South Korea.
The Moscow News (April 6, 2010) adds this quote from the new managing editor.
The new managing editor Sah Dong-seok said that his paper did not want to insult Russia, reports Marker website. “Besides, the caricature was done by freelancers and placed in the Opinion column,” he said. “I did not know that this picture could hurt your feelings so much.
Wouldn’t you know it – even as I finish my posting I see Korea Sparkle has just finished its piece as well as Choson Bimbo (same site?)
Picture Credit – Stephane Peray at Korea Times. As an added note – the cartoon was only uploaded so that the readers will understand why so many people are angry.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
We should collect donations to buy a one-way ticket to fly the KT’s Fools Die guy to a skinhead-infested city in Russia with that cartoon on his teeshirt.
cough, cough.
Could someone explain why this cartoon is offensive? It shows the Russian bear (a well-known symbol of the nation) both enraged and saddened by the recent terrorist attack. I don’t see where it is poking fun.
I’m with dogbertt; but maybe Pravda is just tired of the crappy French/Thai influence in political cartoons in KT and wants them to hire a Russian artist for balance?
Seems like it’s not just South Korea that manufactures phony outrage at foreigners to distract the populace from poor administration at home. I don’t see anything really offensive about the cartoon, but the NASHIs are concerned with rebuilding Russian pride and the KT is a soft target.
We should collect donations to buy a one-way ticket to fly the KT’s Fools Die guy to a skinhead-infested city in Russia with that cartoon on his teeshirt.
Why? Cause he’s a fan of a Mario Puzo novel?
The problem with this cartoon is that the bear looks more like King Kong rather than a bear. It also looks like the King Kong bear destroyed the train. Even to someone who is not inclined to see offense in the cartoon, it was clumsily executed and sends out a confusing message.
That bear looks a lot like Vladimir Putin, come to think of it. Is Pravda putting images of Putin off-limits?
Right now it’s not clear what exactly happened. We’re to take the word of two sources not much different than the paper they’re slamming. Neither of them name names or even offer much in the way of specifics, and there hasn’t been a serious, objective news story out about this. All we’ve heard reported in Korea is foolsdie mention in passing there’s been a reshuffling.
If there was action taken, I guess it’s fitting that it’s after people not even in Korea complained. I mean, this cartoonist’s been at it for years, and the opinion page been home to all kind of garbage. I guess it meant nothing for expats in Korea to be upset by the reporting and the coverage.
I have found Mr. Peray’s work to run the gamut from shoddy to offensive to incomprehensible to inane. In fact, you can bet any one of his cartoons will be some combination of the above. But in this case, offensive is a stretch, I think. Shoddy and inane, definitely.
Seriously, though. This guy most know some pretty important people to be allowed to continue. I love controversy when it’s intelligent, when it says things that people don’t want to hear for intellectual reasons, not for emotional ones. Peray only garners attention for being untimely and distasteful, all while being thoroughly sub-par. He’s like Howard Stern, except no one thinks he’s funny.
I agree with the first two sentences of Netizen Kim’s comment (#7). Perhaps the cartoonist is saying that the Russian Star Wars emperor Palputin has authored this disaster to further his imperialist, dictatorialist aims. Or perhaps he’s simply stubbing his foot by accident. Or perhaps he’s merely a witness, newly arrived on the scene.
Is the cartoon ambiguous? Is the bear destroying the train on purpose, by accident, or not at all? Can we agree on what the cartoon shows? If not, that may not be by accident.
I am highly sceptical of this.
The Ktimes today printed another cartoon by the man. How can I possibly believe that any senior staff has been sacked over these cartoons if the Ktimes continues to print them – even if today’s is innocuous and unfunny?
Not that the KT doesn’t deserve blame for continuing to publish that French douchebag’s cartoons, but some of the Russian anger would be better directed at said French douchebag rather than the KT, the “Korean media” or Korea in general.
Moreover, as far as I know, there’s been no statement by the KT regarding the matter, and I’d rather hear it from them rather than speculate from what I read in Pravda.
And as an aside, like many American conservatives, I get a bit of a hardon for the Russians — thick-headed and paranoid they might be, but they don’t take shit, and when they threaten revenge, they usually deliver — but seriously, the cartoonist — douchebag he may be — has managed to offend just about everyone without, as far as I know, prompting angry statements from anyone else’s foreign ministry.
Robert, I remember trying this line last year when you blogged about the cartoons related to the Aussie bushfire. I tried to appeal for people’s rage to be directed in the right region. Instead people said that the editors were Korean so therefore they were to blame.
Good luck using the same line of argument with the Russians.
I’m not sure which is funnier: 1) two bloggers believing Pravda, for chrissakes, when it says the KT fired the chief editor over this, when the KT management change has been talked about for weeks and had nothing to do with some clown cartoonist in Thailand; or 2) that Pravda even has the KT on its radar and actually gives a toss.
#12: Love that cartoon, by the way, taking the piss out of print media, which proves the guy can scrawl what he wants and they won’t care–kind of like Mr. Breen getting away with his F-bomb column a couple years back.
It’s not hard to understand why Russians are offended by the unsympathetic drawing of the bear. The bear looks angry, ferocious, and out of control. If Peray was drawing cartoons back on 9-11 he’d have depicted Lady Liberty in a similarly unsympathetic light. Peray just has no empathy for countries and people suffering from tragedy. Either that or he can’t draw worth sh..t. How absolutely clueless and unaccountable can the editorial staff at the Korea Times be? Or maybe they’re just equally unsympathetic to the tragedies suffered by non-Koreans throughout the world.
I still remember 2 years ago The Korea Times running an article that basically had no function but to describe how Parkinson’s Disease had effected Ali. I was thinking at the time “Do they screen this stuff at all before they run it?”
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