Although newspaper photos represent windows of the world, readers can be offended when such photos are disturbingly graphic.
Joh Sun-jae, 43, is one of such reader, who called The Korea Times on Friday afternoon to complain that a front page photo from the Friday edition of the newspaper (no. 19976) was hard to digest. It was a photomontage showing U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert with a clear bleeding gash on his right cheek from a Thursday morning attack by a xenophobic activist identified as Kim Ki-jong.
“I thought the photo’s visual explicitness was excessive,” said Joh, who works at an IT firm. “It was in a newspaper that is read not just by adults but children.”
Joh, who said he’s politically liberal-minded, has had an understanding that the newspaper is more conservative than liberal and wondered whether that leveraged the company to publicize the gruesome photo.
“I read another local newspaper (The Kyunghyang Shimmun) along with the Korea Times,” said Joh, who has been reading the English daily for two years. “A front page photo of the other newspaper was moderate, showing the ambassador placing a handkerchief on his bleeding cheek. I thought the Korea Times went overboard.”
Joh also expressed discomfort at part of the photomontage which showed a man stamping on the head of Kim at the scene inside Sejong Center for the Performing Arts in central Seoul.
“I thought it was wrong of the Korea Times to publicize the photo without little graphic discretion.”