Looks like the Chosun Ilbo has finally started doing what the Korean media should have been doing a long time ago — reporting also on patterns of violence against foreigners. Although it remains to be seen whether this writer’s observations regarding the rise in petty violence against foreign men will ever make it into mainstream reporting, at least a major daily has started to report on a problem I noted with rising numbers of sexual assaults on foreign females quite some time ago. Winter brought the issue to the fore during her tenure on Misuda.

Here’s to a story that doesn’t fit the grand narrative.

It’s excellent because it’s heartfelt and makes a very good point, but without the longwindedness. As they say, a “picture is worth a thousand words,” so what you see here speaks volumes.

And two of my own images were used in its making, so I am flattered.

We here at Korean Media Watch like dealing with rumor-mongering and myth-spreading with real numbers. Ben Wagner writes in his article “Abandon Discriminatory HIV Policy” in The Korea Herald about the problematic ways that the “AIDS” issue has been used as a blunt tool scare tactic to justify stigmatizing foreigners, then discriminatory regulations. The article also examines the shady origins of the “English Spectrum” myth, and how it was nothing more than a xenophobic response to essentially nothing.

If the Korean government doesn’t think that nation branding and the treatment of foreigners living in Korea aren’t inexplicably linked, the future doesn’t look bright.