tværpostet fra: https://feddit.dk/post/23221162
Journalists love to get Korea wrong. Some are paid to share explosive takes that feed into the subsconscoius orientalist views of the wider world; others just do it for the social media clout.
There is a weird sensation that comes from watching someone deliver a sociological autopsy of a nation in a 14-minute YouTube video essay.
Korea is currently occupying this weird hyper-visible cultural sweet spot where it is simultaneously a global entertainment superpower and, at the same time, a distant canvas for Western anxieties.
Historically, this Western “dystopian” template was first aimed at Japan. Back in the late 80s and 90s, when the American imagination was absolutely terrified of Tokyo buying up Manhattan, Japan was the original blade-runner-esque, soul-crushing corporate hive-mind.
This fell a little flat for me. This seems like a case of someone having accidentally guided their algorithm to the most common denominator which typically leads to rage bait or sensationalism. I’ve seen just as much positive content about Korea as I have critical content. Furthermore neither seems extremely out of balance with similar content regarding other countries. But again maybe I interact with YouTube in a away the hasn’t pigeonholed me into some echo chamber or sensationalist algorithm. With the exception of maybe content regarding the US which skews more negative.