On 6 July last, Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed on its final approach to San Francisco Internat-ional Airport. The Boeing 777 – which departed from Incheon Airport, west of Seoul – was carrying 291 passengers from nine countries.
Three Chinese teenagers lost their lives in the crash, with a dozen more critically injured.
As the investigation into the accident continues, Yonhap News Agency reported last week that Asiana Airlines would file a defamation suit against a US TV station which aired “bogus and racially insensitive” hoax names for the four pilots of Flight 214.
San Francisco Bay Area Station KTVU Channel 2, citing confirmation from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), identified the pilots using names that were clearly racist jokes. KTVU quickly issued an on-air apology.
“We never read the names out loud, phonetically sounding them out,” said newscaster Frank Sommerville, by way of explanation as to how the racism went over their heads.
The NTSB later confirmed that “a summer intern had acted outside the scope of his authority” in providing the false names to the TV news team. Despite this, Asiana confirmed it would file a defamation suit as the KTVU broadcast “had seriously undermined our company’s honour”.
National shame
Meanwhile, days after the crash, the Associated Press ran a story under the headline ‘Asiana crash a point of national shame for Koreans’.
The article was littered with feel-bad stories. Reporters Foster Klug and Lee Yoo-kyuong noted how “South Koreans took it personally” and that the Asiana CEO had “apologised to all of Korea”.
The image of the stricken Asiana aircraft had caused “average Koreans” to feel “shame and embarrassment”, the article continued. They even quoted an office worker from Seoul who thinks that “foreigners see this accident as a reflection on all of South Korea”.
Of course, the reality is somewhat different. People from all across the globe have commented, in great appreciation, how the Asiana CEO had appeared before the TV cameras bowing his head in respect to the deceased.
It is also possible that not everyone in the west is aware that Asiana is a Korean airline, as it does not bear the name of the country, and roughly half the passengers were Chinese. But this isn’t the point.
The real issue arising from the article is why Koreans should feel shame in front of the international community. Why was there not nearly the same level of embarrassment – or outrage – following Kim Tae-kyun’s remarks about Lotte Giants’ pitcher Shane Youman’s skin colour, as I wrote about last time? Or how about MBC’s decision to broadcast a hugely inflammatory documentary exposing foreign men and their relationships with Korean women? There have too been recent scandals involving baseball players allegedly arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol, with one player reportedly already serving a drink-driving ban.
South Korea also experiences one of the worst gender inequality gaps of the OECD countries, and one of the highest suicide rates (partly down to the intense pressure at educational institutions) and vehicular death rates in the developed world.
And there’s more. According to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS), Korea ranks in first place for plastic surgery per 1,000 of the population. Then there is the continued US military presence in their country, and the annual war games, which provoke response from their neighbours in the North.
Asiana Flight 214 was a very unfortunate incident that saw three young Chinese girls lose their lives. However, if, as the AP article suggests, Koreans feel shame, then surely they should look at the examples above as well. In this case, it would appear “average” Koreans are asking all the wrong questions.
Andrew Farrell works as an English language teacher in Korea.
