This video is a parody of the ridiculous, offensive video “The Shocking Reality About Relationships With Foreigners” which aired on South Korea’s MBC TV network in May 2012. The video will make more sense if you’ve already seen the original MBC video with English subtitles, in all its bigoted glory.
Note: MBC issued a takedown notice to Youtube for the original video, citing copyright violation, but it remained online at Facebook. After the hubbub passed, it seems to have been re-uploaded to Youtube, too.
Categories: Films & Videos
An Open Letter to Steve Albani of Comedy Central and The Daily Show:
Dear Mr. Steve Albani,
In keeping with the content and spirit of The Daily Show, I am writing you to bring an event to your attention that just might provide content for your excellent program and promote tolerance and understanding in East Asia. I myself am not a journalist, but I am an American who has worked in education in South Korea and China for some five years now. Racism in the Republic of Korea is nothing approaching what African-Americans endured under Jim Crow laws, but even in South Korea, a robust American ally and liberal democratic republic, the media often warn Koreans about the evils of all things foreign and particularly the lascivious nature of Westerners. Please forgive a bit of exposition:
This atmosphere of overt bigotry was quietly endured by more cosmopolitan and progressive Koreans and foreigners residing in Korea for years. Seeing non-Koreans barred from restaurants or nightlife venues or having interracial couples harassed in public are events whose ebb and flow tend to coincide with key events, such as after the US military killed two junior high school students in a traffic accident (Korean Times 2008) or when photos of Korean women dating non-Koreans along with degrading comments went viral and the Korean public was assured that all non-Koreans are HIV positive (Joong Ang Daily 2005) and myriad other lesser incidents. Hence most expats in Korea and Koreans who long not to be marginalized because of their loves lives or biracial children have followed one of two courses: either that they should remove themselves from the constant petty racism that sometimes manifests much more acutely or to simply bear it with a labored grin and more than a pinch of salt.
When MBC, a major Korean television station, released a report (MBC 2012) yet again warning against dating HIV infected foreigners and questioning why Korean women are easily tempted to copulate in exchange for exposure to the English language, the backlash was unprecedented. Internationally savvy Koreans, expats and especially international couples in Korea had had enough. They reacted vociferously against MBC, demanded an apology and sought to turn the tides of xenophobia, racism and sexism. I have been long in getting to the part that is relevant to the concerns of Comedy Central, but part of that reaction feature a bit of satire that is too good to go unnoticed within Korea or internationally.
A production studio in Seoul, Brutal Rice Productions, lambasted the original MBC piece in a style familiar to the English speaking world, but largely unglimpsed in Asia. Whereas most comedy in South Korea has been a shoddy physical sort of slapstick that would have embarrassed the James Carey of the Ace Ventura era, Brutal Rice’s Shocking Report: Foreigners Dating Koreans Conspiracy(Brutal Rice 2012) is, in my modest opinion, on par with what The Daily Show and The Colbert Report accomplish on a nightly basis. But this is an important moment in Korean comedy’s development, not in that they have adopted Anglosphere-styled satire, but in that they have taken two bold cultural strides: namely, humor that serves as a public call for tolerance and self-effacing humor, neither of which I have ever witnessed in Asia.
I understand that the world is currently full of stories that an American audience might consume with more of a sense of urgency than identity politics in South Korea. Yet the showcasing of people fighting a good fight is never a wasted action, as Comedy Central demonstrated with Bassem Youssef’s June 21st appearance on The Daily Show. Similarly, providing exposure of this watershed moment in Korean cultural and comedic transformation might provide some laughs for Americans, but more importantly it may provide a modicum of legitimacy for a growing segment of Koreans and expats in international relationships in the Republic of Korea.
I am not associated with Brutal Rice in any way, but because I appreciate what Comedy Central does and hope to see Brutal Rice encouraged and promoted, I thought to bring this to your attention.
Thank you for your time and attention and happy Fourth of July from the Republic of Korea!
Respectfully,
Matt Rosencrance
Brutal Rice 2012 – Shocking Report: Foreigners Dating Koreans Conspiracy (English Subtitles)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=elZilTWDOag
Joong Ang Daily 2005 – “Web Messages Draw Koreans’ Wrath”
http://koreajoongangdaily.joinsmsn.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=2517830
Korean Times 2008 – “Saying Sorry across Cultures”
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2008/06/168_17684.html
MBC 2012 – The Shocking Reality about Relationships with Foreigners (English Subtitles)