Are we open-minded? ¶ Media English 2008

http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2008/04/16/2008041601310.html

( I’m really sorry that I link to an Korean article. It was impossible to find an article that was translated into English. )

In short, the article reports that a film production company restricted pressmen not to ask any questions about racism. Since Korean gangs appear on the movie, the company expected that pressmen would ask about the racism on their movie. I do care how Korean described on movies, so I’m happy with it, too.

However, we talked about ‘stereotype’ in a class that I take this semester. I learned that lack of information leads to stereotype on something. I believe that racism that we express through media is also a part of stereotype caused by lack of information.

On the other hand, we are able to get much information since foreigners live next to us. Many people are going abroad to live there or getting a job and they settle down together to build up their communities including Korea town, China town. All these things that happening around us could help us to understand foreigners’ culture, so that we can be friends with them.

As I said, we have more chance to understand each other, but why don’t we stop misunderstanding?

One thought on “Are we open-minded?”

When we got a chance to hold the Olympic and Worldcup which are very international events, lots of media provides wrong information (it’s not even stereotype) to people living all over the world. What really didn’t make sense at all was ‘Are you planning to go to Korea? You’ve got to get many shots to protect yourself. It’s dirty so disease are everywhere that can make you sick or die. Don’t go to see a doctor there. They can hurt you. You’d not better to go there.’ Something like this. I am not sure about the exact sentence but I am sure what the context was.
Without well-done observation we can make mistakes sometimes. However to understand each other and get close to each other we should try to ‘learn’ culture also we are supposed to be ready to acquire differences and take anything from other countries important. Nothing can deserve to be treated unfairly.

Hyejin Yang on April 18, 2008 at 10:46 pm said:

When we got a chance to hold the Olympic and Worldcup which are very international events, lots of media provides wrong information (it’s not even stereotype) to people living all over the world. What really didn’t make sense at all was ‘Are you planning to go to Korea? You’ve got to get many shots to protect yourself. It’s dirty so disease are everywhere that can make you sick or die. Don’t go to see a doctor there. They can hurt you. You’d not better to go there.’ Something like this. I am not sure about the exact sentence but I am sure what the context was.
Without well-done observation we can make mistakes sometimes. However to understand each other and get close to each other we should try to ‘learn’ culture also we are supposed to be ready to acquire differences and take anything from other countries important. Nothing can deserve to be treated unfairly.