Open to the world

Dear editor,

As a European reader, I have to thank you for printing two informative AFP articles on the EU in Monday’s issue of The Korea Times. However, as thanking comes from thinking, I continue and think that your almost only English-sourced paper owes its globalized readers more than merely American-based views in the Opinion page.

Ranging from the story of the Confucius Peace Prize for Putin on the right to the consumption-critical article on the left of Page 7, they all seem to reflect only what “we” (i.e. Americans) think. Since its establishment in 1950 when Korea physically needed the U.S. (and the U.N.), also your paper by now had time and reason enough to intellectually grow out of unilateral dependence and move toward opening up to the world.

No wonder that 62 percent of Korean parents see a need for foreign teachers, in order to “reduce fear of foreigners” as reported in Page 3, if their children still associate foreigners mainly with U.S. soldiers and Hollywood heroes. In the meantime, in Korea goods from China and investment from the EU have outpaced those from the U.S., but you reduce your readers’ intellectual insights still to inputs from across the Pacific.

As a lawyer I should say, “Audiatur et altera pars! (Hear the other side!)” Yours cannot purely be an ideological choice. Europe certainly is the cradle and remains a breeding ground of many an ideology, for good or for bad, and China has lived through most of them.

As democracies evolve from "lobby-pushed votes to content-driven voices" with the Arab Spring and Occupying "Indignados," Korea can certainly also afford a more pluralistic press: “Vive la difference!”

Dr. Wolfgang Pape

EU-Asia researcher

Jeju Island

wolfgang.pape@gmail.com