Cartoon Angers Americans
By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
While the Virginia Tech carnage shocked the world, an ``imprudent'' editorial cartoon in a local newspaper released on its Web site has raised the hackles of Koreans and people outside the country.
The vernacular daily ``The Seoul Shinmun'' on its Web site on Tuesday afternoon released a cartoon of U.S. President George Bush giving a media briefing on the massacre.
In the picture, Bush said, ``The life of 33 people killed at a time, our excellence of firearm technology was shown again.''
The original intention of the cartoon was to satire the U.S. government's allowing its nationals to possess guns that may have given connivance to the shooting. However, when it was introduced to Web sites and portal sites, the cartoon was translated into English and was rapidly spread to other sites _ including many outside Korea.
The translated pictures were soon found on Japanese and American sites.
After the cartoon was released, thousands of netizens criticized the cartoonist and the newspaper company for being indiscreet.
``No matter what the original intention was, innocent people dying should not be related to any satire.'' Lee Eun-young, a 29-year-old woman who read the cartoon, said.
After the report that the suspect was a Korean national, the accusations against the ``mockery of the death'' intensified. Mass visits to the site shut down the company's server.
``They say a pen is mightier that the sword, and the paper does not seem to understand that this picture can be a weapon aimed at all the people related to the tragedy,'' a netizen (ID:Nomuhae) said.
Some others worried the cartoon might stimulate Americans' anger. Another netizen (ID: onesuc) said that the cartoon is already posted on Japanese and American news sites and more people are posting the picture at this very moment. ``Think of Korean students in the U.S. Some of them are scared to go outside. Think how this cartoon might affect them,'' he harshly criticized.
Baek Moo-hyun, the cartoonist, said to the local daily JoongAng Ilbo that he had not meant to mock the victims or make fun of them, and that the cartoon was drawn long before the criminal was revealed to be a Korea national. He said he is sorry for the Koreans in the U.S. who might suffer more from the aftereffect of the cartoon.
The company on Tuesday night immediately changed the cartoon to ``The murderer was Korean'' and tried to settle the matter.