Politics, Emotions and Television

Anyone with a bit of experience in Korea will acknowledge that Korean people are passionate. This cultural characteristic is on display in the current political upheaval over importing American beef and the FTA with the United States. If you doubt this, view the following video presentationNot surprisingly, one of the factors that ignited the current wave of political emotion was a documentary on mad cow disease aired by MBC. Some of the television images from that program reminded me of the time, as a high school student, that I toured a Swift Company meat-packing plant in rural South Dakota. Surely, seeing cows slaughtered and cut apart is something that we consumers of pulgogi, ribs or hamburgers seldom think about, and many of the images can be frightening, especially to young people seeing them for the first time. In an earlier post I mentioned the role of instant messaging on mobile phones in Korea's current political upheaval. Equally important is the emotional and visceral impact of graphic visual news on television. To see some of that, look at another video that is circulating widely in South Korea via television and the internet.