Jung Min-ho has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2012, mostly covering social and political issues. He currently belongs to the Politics & City Desk where he covers topics such as health, labor and human rights. Prior to joining the team, he was responsible for covering North Korea and sports. His article about a biosecurity breach of Middle East respiratory syndrome won him an award from the Korea Science Journalists Association in 2016. He is also the co-author of the book, "Medical Pioneers of Korea" (2019). He served as the head of the international relations committee at the Journalists Association of Korea from 2021 to 2023.
Could Japanese understand it?
KFA letter contains at least 27 grammatical, contextual errors
By Jung Min-ho
A brief six-paragraph letter sent by the Korea Football Association (FTA) to its Japanese counterpart regarding the brouhaha following the football match between the two countries at the London Olympics contains at least 27 mistakes.
Judging by his poor composition, it is doubtful that KFA President Cho Chung-yun intended to be as apologetic as Japanese media claimed he was on the basis of this letter.
Cho sent the letter after Korean footballer Park Jong-woo celebrated his team’s victory against Japan in the match to decide the bronze medal winner by parading a placard that reads, “Dokdo is our land.”
The letter became public when Rep. An Min-seok of the opposition Democratic United Party released it to the press Friday and was obtained by The Korea Times.
According to copyeditors whose native tongue is English and the Korean sports desk staff, even the title contains a mistake. “Unsporting celebrating activities after the Olympic football match” should have read “Unsporting celebration after the Olympic football match.”
Approximately 10 percent of the one-page, 278-word document, was littered with poor word choices, grammatical errors and erroneous capitalization, indicative of a clumsy approach on an issue that requires careful diplomatic negotiations.
The grammatical errors include a section that states “it was just happened impulsively,” when referring to Park’s celebration. According to the copyeditors, and the rules of English grammar it should have read, “it just happened impulsively.”
The letter goes on to say that Cho will “give my strong message to every single Korea national team players” and “wish both Japan and Korea women’s players have surprise world football fans that Asian football is the future of the world” in the upcoming FIFA U-20 women’s world cup.
The mistakes are highlighted in red in the photo of the edited copy of the letter.