Opinion - The Korea Times

Too Hot for China’s Kitchen

By Tom Plate Former Professor at University of California, Los Angeles, Director of Asia Pacific Media Network It is one of the positives of my largely happy life that I have never found myself in the field of public relations with a client like Beijing. It's not that there aren't many wondrously good stories about the People's Republic of China ― fabulous stories, in fact (hundreds of millions of otherwise dirt-poor people moving up into a better economic life, etc. etc.), and others we still have to learn about. But! As long as the old geezers in Beijing are still calling the biggest shots for the globe's most populated nation, China remains an account that no one would want. How many times have they been warned not to remind people of horrible Tiananmen Square? Okay, the Chinese hacking of Google's email accounts on the mainland reaches not quite the same order of malevolence as the bloody head-cracking that took place in China's capital in June 1989. But, symbolically, it is too comfortably close: It's dealing with dissent and uncertainty with force. In the end, the peop

Apr 11, 2010By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

American Values That Make Grade

By Tom Plate Sometimes virtue doesn't have to be its own reward. The Cornell men's basketball team just won a pair of big-time basketball games here in the States. If you're not utterly shocked, then you don't know the inside story of college athletics in America. Cornell University is an Ivy League school whose sole major misfortune is to be frozen every winter like an Arctic ruin in the God-awful upper New York state city of Ithaca. So when its men's team scored upset triumphs in basketball, it was national news. That's because it wasn't just any other time. They were victories in early rounds of the gala national-college-athletic-association (NCCA) marathon tournament known to all hysterical hoopster-lovers as ``March Madness" ― and/or ``The Big Dance." It was the venerable school's first NCAA tourney wins ever. You would never know it when you travel abroad, but it gets very crazy in America around this time of year. For March Madness also sounds the opening gong for a different kind of youthful athletic frenzy. It's known as Spring Break. But let's not get into that.

Mar 28, 2010By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

US Media Needs Wake-Up Call

By Tom Plate Different societies allow their news media to assume different roles. In most countries the media is subordinated to power, whether of the government or the ruling class. Surprisingly or not, the American model is not widely emulated globally. Unfortunately, these days, it is not even widely admired within the United States. This is beyond sad. A recent column expressed my view that the feverous coverage of Tiger Woods' private life was beyond all good taste and professional reserve. Actually, I thought it was totally disgusting. This view appeared to be widely shared. Here is one email from a reader in Southeast Asia that more or less spoke for many others received: ``I full-heartedly agree with you. This kind of prurient media circus nauseates me no end. Tiger Woods' affairs should remain between him and his wife, or between him and the women who agreed to have affairs with him, unless a crime has been committed. Bravo." A reader in South Korea emailed: ``I agree with your article 100 percent. The media knows no bounds and their recycles often run storie

Mar 14, 2010By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Skating on Thin Ice

By Tom Plate Thankfully, World War Three is over. The big battle between Japan and South Korea is done. The big guns on both sides have stopped smoking and victory has been declared. And somehow ― miraculously, but in the way almost unique to Asia ― the war has ended without a single life being lost. The reference, of course, is to the finals of the figure skating championship of the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. Call it the war of the poses, if you like. In the shootout for the gold medal, the Korean nation beat the Japanese nation. Exultant hysteria in Seoul ensued, but there was no joy in Japan. Like mighty Casey at the bat ― in the legendary lore of the famous American folk poem ― mighty Casey has struck out. That is how they look at it in South Korea; and that is how they look at it in Japan. The bottom line on the hot ice of the Olympic skating rink was that Mao Asada had her skates cleaned by Kim Yu-na. Period. I don't know whether to laugh or cry over this formulation. What really happened that sensational and otherwise wholly enjoyable night was that a rela

Mar 4, 2010By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Lost Between Forest and Trees

By Tom Plate At times my loyalty to my chosen profession of journalism cannot be taken as a given. This is one of those times. To put the matter in a quite unrefined way, the Tiger Woods psychodrama makes me sick, and besides turning my stomach, it is turning me into something close to a double-agent. I am in danger of becoming a career journalist with such cavernous doubts about the values and virtues of journalism as all too frequently practiced in America that I am almost ready to spy for the enemy. Yes, this is because of Tiger Woods. The transcendently great golfer let it all ― or at least a lot of it ― hang out in his public confession of serial sinning at an appearance Friday before the so-called news media in Florida. Please note that in America these days, a personalized, self-humiliating outing of any and all aspects of one's private life has become par for the celebrity course. Nothing whatsoever is deemed to be out of bounds from the prying public eye. Tiger, a married man, had already admitted that, yes, he has been quite the swinger ― and not just on the l

Feb 28, 2010By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Odd Couplet Gets Even Odder

By Tom Plate Unless they somehow manage to entwine us in World War Three with China, our friends in Taiwan truly are our friends. That's a big IF, of course. Over and over again, Beijing has let the world know that any dramatic move by the offshore island toward permanent and formal independence would trigger war. To back this threat up, the good people of the People's Liberation Army have tilted more than a thousand mainland missiles in Taiwan's direction. This is serious business. Last year the prestigious and nonpartisan RAND Corporation, nearby in Santa Monica, concluded that the military balance over the Taiwan Strait had overwhelmingly tipped westward toward the mainland and a full-scale attack from China would be very difficult to repel. Unless, of course, you-know-who intervened on the side of the little guy. But there are problems with that, because you-know-who is currently (a) bogged down militarily in Afghanistan, (b) still in Iraq, (c) worried to death and militarily involved in Pakistan and (d) hovering over the threat of Iran's nuclear ambitions as

Feb 18, 2010By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Asian Fusion or Confusion?

By Tom Plate Not all dinner parties are alike, fortunately. Occasionally you go to one that is not boring. We were lucky enough to attend one of those the other night. The fare was Californian fusion, but the killer item on the menu was the serious table talk about Asia. So much food for thought was offered that, when the evening was over, few had much of an appetite for dessert. And it was chocolate cake! For what started as an evening of Asian fusion, more or less ended in consensus about Asian confusion. The dinner began optimistically. Many Asian economies are surging, especially compared to the United States. According to estimates or projections by Themes Investment Management, the red-hot Asia-based house headed by former Goldman Sachs Asia chairman Kenneth Courtis, China, at more than 9-percent growth, again led the pack last year. India, not too shabbily, crossed the growth finish line at over 6 percent. Vietnam, the socialist republic with a reforming economy, hit the 5-percent growth mark. Even Indonesia, crawling its way through the developmental stat

Feb 15, 2010By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Toyota Tells the Story

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― Once upon a time ― not so long ago in fact ― the word ``Toyota" was a synonym for ``quality," even ``reliability." Even that's under recall now. In a stunning reversal, the Tokyo-based auto giant is starting to back-pedal big-time. More than two million cars, from no less than eight model-lines, are being recalled, due to widespread performance-safety reports. Included in the massive backwards-movement were the popular Camry sedans and RAV4 sport utility vehicles. Red-faced Toyota execs admit that even the Prius, the green-car superstar, is under serious scrutiny. Good news for America? Sure, in the sense that what's not good for Toyota can prove great for General Motors (not to mention Ford). Last month, the latter realized a 24-percent increase in sales, and GM's up-tick was also anything but shabby. Trend lines? Time, as it so often does, will tell. In the meantime, the massive recall has an arguably philosophical as well as business dimension. The first thing to be recalled is the notion that anything produced by the Japanese doesn't

Feb 8, 2010By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Truth in Fiction

By Tom Plate Almost everyone I know wants to be like Spenser. The fictional Boston-based private investigator stood for almost all the right things. This P.I. thought clearly, acted quickly, bonded with the good guys, wasted the bad guys, and always knew the right thing to do and say. And could this boy ever whip up a gourmet meal! But don't ask about the private eye's first name, his creator didn't give him one, much less his secret recipes; and don't be critical ― remember, Superman himself got only one name. The famed Spenser novels (37 of them, from 1973) were beloved by millions of readers. Many were huge bestsellers. Even readers who lived in Boston learned new secrets about Boston life with Spenser as their tour guide. Fictional heroes fill in reality's gaps and disappointments. This celebrated literary hero created by American author Robert B. Parker hails from the macho-man tradition of Philip Marlowe and even secret agent James Bond. The latter, concocted by former British intelligence officer Ian Fleming, hit bookshelves at a time ('50s/'60s) when the Britis

Jan 31, 2010By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Bitter Bytes of Data

By Tom Plate Former Professor at University of California, Los Angeles, Director of Asia Pacific Media Network Prelude to World War Three? Not exactly ― that'd be a rather spectacular example of journalistic inflammation at its worst. So let's put Google's spat with China in perspective. Considering the gigantic size and enormous global footprint of the U.S. and China, the areas of genuine major conflict between them are relatively small. Yes, you have the tensions over Taiwan and Tibet, which may well drag on forever. And then you have the roiling quarrel over China's currency subsidies, which impact trade-friction issues. Enter now, though, a more pressing problem that has been looming for some time - and has now hit the international-relations fan big-time. Call it a ``clash of civilizations" between the Chinese civilization and the American one ― with nary a fiery Muslim cleric or bomb-toting terrorist in sight. At issue is a conception of information that is distinctly and honestly American, versus one that is distinctly and honestly Chinese. In the former, infor

Jan 21, 2010By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Read more

Too Hot for China’s Kitchen

American Values That Make Grade

US Media Needs Wake-Up Call

Skating on Thin Ice

Lost Between Forest and Trees

Odd Couplet Gets Even Odder

Asian Fusion or Confusion?

Toyota Tells the Story

Truth in Fiction

Bitter Bytes of Data

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