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| The wrecked fuselage of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 sits in a storage area at San Francisco International Airport. / AFP-Yonhap |
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From racist pranks to speculation that Korean culture led to the crash of Asiana Flight 214, coverage of the disaster has been fraught with cultural issues.
A San Francisco-area TV station's accidental use of racist names for the four pilots involved in the July 6 crash went viral. That followed rampant speculation that Korea's hierarchal culture contributed to the disaster, without the use of actual information from the cockpit.
Not to mention the rapid social media responses that exploited stereotypes that Asians are "bad drivers."
The coverage raises questions about the role of culture and race in the media. How do these lenses affect international coverage — and understanding — of a rising, but still relatively little-known country such as Korea? How did a tragic incident become tainted with ethnic slurs and racist comments?
Wall Street Journal columnist Jeff Yang, a leading commentator on Asian-American affairs, said that while cultural reasons are cited universally to explain behavior, commentary is ratcheted up when it comes to Asians.
"The speed with which people leap to cultural values and cultural difference when analyzing events related to Asians is distressingly fast, and representative of the ongoing beliefs that Asians are alien, remote and exotic in ways that Westerners can't immediately comprehend, and also that Asians behave and respond in ways that are more homogenous than Westerners — that all Asians are somehow alike," he wrote in an e-mail.
Last week, reports emerged from various American outlets that pointed to Korean "cockpit culture" as a possible cause of the crash. A report by CNBC said Korea's aviation sector remained "rooted in a national character that's largely about preserving hierarchy —and asking few questions of those in authority."
Many of the U.S. reports cited a 2008 book by Malcolm Gladwell, "Outliers," in which the pop culture author points to a "cultural legacy" of deference towards elders to explain crashes by Korean Air up until the late 1990s.
Sharon Heijin Lee, assistant professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University said one problem is that the articles cite American culture as a reference point.
Lee referred to a CNBC story that explains linguistic differences between the United States and Korea as the difference between "Yo! You want water?" and "It's a warm day for a nice refreshment, no?"
"These types of comparisons minimize the actual existence of hierarchies within the U.S. — since I'm pretty sure that not too many American's start an inquiry to their senior colleague in a professional setting with Yo!'" she said.
Yang said the tendency to view Asians as homogenous was evident in the gaffe by the television station, KTVU, in which an anchor repeated caricatured prank names that referenced the tragedy, such as "Sum Ting Wong."
"If (the names) seemed a bit odd, the suspicion was dismissed, because Asian names are so strange to begin with; and if the KTVU gatekeepers wondered if they didn't sound more Chinese than Korean, they shrugged because of the assumption that half a dozen of one is six of another."
Of course, Koreans also use culture to explain behaviors — remember the archery coach who chalked up the success of Koreans at the London Olympics to the making of kimchi and use of chopsticks?
But there are concerns that Korean culture is used as a catch-all explanation.
As an example, Yang cited coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 committed by Korean-born Cho Seung-hui, in which the violent Korean film "Oldboy" was mentioned as an influential factor.
"While non-Asian mass killers are analyzed based on their individual families and personal circumstances, many commentators instantly began questioning whether Korean values and even pop culture contributed to Cho's actions," he said.
Lee of NYU said coverage of plastic surgery practices in Korea also has the tendency to overlook Koreans as individuals and "instead discusses them as cultural dupes who deserve skepticism for electing plastic surgery for the ‘wrong' reasons and too frequently."
Reports about plastic surgery in Korea, which has the world's highest per capita rate of procedures, sometimes question whether those who get surgery do so to appear more Western.
As for the fallout from the crash, KTVU has apologized for the incident, as has the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which said a summer intern mistakenly confirmed the names of the flight crew. And as evidence emerges on the cause of the crash, culture could become a pertinent point.
Yang described using culture to explain behavior as a double-edged sword.
"On the one hand, we often talk about cultural values as a positive differentiator — the individualism and entrepreneurship of Americans, the collectivism and sense of social responsibility of Asians," he said.
"The problem is that these cultural explanations can easily slip into a stereotypical shorthand that makes it harder, not easier to understand what's actually going on in times of tragedy."
