My favorite pastime
The Korean media is interesting, to say the least.
In fact, watching the news has become one of my favorite pastimes here.
The past few days, Korea caught a sudden baseball fever, after beating USA and Japan in the world baseball classics.
And surprise! Out of the blue, the media starts to rant about the ‘national heroes’, how Koreans finally defeated Japan in baseball despite Japan’s 30 years headstart, and the players even got exempted from army service. The sports news section, which is usually crammed with soccer, becomes a baseball documentary, showing the history of Korean baseball.
As expected, they carry it too far, digging through old records trying to show how Koreans have always defeated Japan in the 8th round, blah blah blah. It was so awkwardly overdone that it was painful (and frankly, quite amusing) to watch. They were so sure of winning, and went on and on about victory.
And we lost.
The media was unusually quiet that day, barely mentioning the defeat. Then, they started to patch up. “Despite the defeat, our heroes~ blah blah blah”
And there was the congressman scandal. A drunk congressman sexually harassed a female reporter, and his excuse was that he thought she was working there. Few days later, fellow congressmen publicly defended him by saying alcohol was the main cause. They held up a glass of liquor and smashed it with a hammer. Nice showmanship.
I wander what’s up next.
In fact, watching the news has become one of my favorite pastimes here.
The past few days, Korea caught a sudden baseball fever, after beating USA and Japan in the world baseball classics.
And surprise! Out of the blue, the media starts to rant about the ‘national heroes’, how Koreans finally defeated Japan in baseball despite Japan’s 30 years headstart, and the players even got exempted from army service. The sports news section, which is usually crammed with soccer, becomes a baseball documentary, showing the history of Korean baseball.
As expected, they carry it too far, digging through old records trying to show how Koreans have always defeated Japan in the 8th round, blah blah blah. It was so awkwardly overdone that it was painful (and frankly, quite amusing) to watch. They were so sure of winning, and went on and on about victory.
And we lost.
The media was unusually quiet that day, barely mentioning the defeat. Then, they started to patch up. “Despite the defeat, our heroes~ blah blah blah”
And there was the congressman scandal. A drunk congressman sexually harassed a female reporter, and his excuse was that he thought she was working there. Few days later, fellow congressmen publicly defended him by saying alcohol was the main cause. They held up a glass of liquor and smashed it with a hammer. Nice showmanship.
I wander what’s up next.