Many readers of the Iowa State Daily have asked why I was being negative and critical toward South Korea, the country where I was born, in my columns. This question is understandable since most people tend to show positive aspects of their origins when they need to introduce or advertise their national backgrounds to people from other countries. However, when it comes to journalism, there is nothing to discuss if a journalist only talks about the positive sides of an issue. In order to reform and fix the negative sides of society, it is essential to be critical.

One of the biggest motivations for me to write critical columns was the American TV show “The Newsroom.” I was very impressed by this drama when Will McAvoy, the main character, said that America is not the greatest nation in the world. In the show, a college student asked several anchors to explain why the United States is the greatest nation in the world. While other anchors were mentioning how America is economically developed and politically free, McAvoy brought up the hidden sides of American society to prove that America is not the greatest nation. The quote below exactly shows his belief that America still has lots of issues to be fixed.

“We’re seventh in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: Number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, 25 of whom are allies.”

According to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the famous German philosopher, society is able to develop by criticizing its contradiction. This means if there is no critique against society, society is not able to improve its weak points. This is why I completely agree with McAvoy’s perspective of America and it is also the reason I’m focusing on the hidden side of South Korea. 

Whenever people say flight attendants of the Korean Airlines are so attractive, I say it’s because of Korea’s strange culture that encourages females to care too much about their own appearance and makes them have plastic surgery when they apply for jobs. I also talk about how the Korean education system is not reasonable, since it forces students to study for about ten hours per day and doesn’t provide opportunities to allow them to find out what they really want to do in the future.

In addition, when people say Park Chung-hee, the former Korean president, developed Korean economy by building industrial facilities and supporting the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, I criticize his dictatorship, which suppressed people who were shouting for democracy during the painful labor at factories and killed innocent people in Vietnam by participating in the war. 

Although it doesn’t seem like South Korea has lots of issues, it has lots of problems to be fixed when I try to look at its hidden side. Just as McAvoy tried to fix the negative sides of American society, I also want to convey the message that Korea has lots of issues to be reformed to make people think what Koreans should change in order to improve its quality of the culture and the politics. I hope my Korean readers can understand the importance of critique rather than taking my columns offensively.