(image: Captured screenshot of Yeni Şafak’s website)
SEOUL, Jun. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — As a season of elections, both parliamentary and presidential, dawn upon Turkey, a series of disparaging and distorted press reports on South Korea have been published.
On May 31, Turkish daily Yeni Şafak published a column that criticized the current discourse calling for a “Korean model” of economic development, ahead of the presidential elections this month.
The Yeni Şafak is known for its pro-government stance and support for Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the current president of Turkey, and the ruling party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP).
The column said that the “Korean model” does nothing but try to please the U.S. and that the nation sacrifices itself to American culture.
Faruk Aksoy, who penned the controversial article, presented Korean boy band BTS as an example of his argument.
The column stated that people who want to be westernized but too afraid to admit it, instead, say that they want “to be like Korea.” Thus, presenting the Korean model is, in fact, aiming for a westernized state.
The column went as far as to use racial slurs to depict Asian facial features.
On the same day, another daily newspaper, Aydinlik, published a column that wrongly stated that South Korea was a state occupied by America.
In response to the ruling party’s main oppositional candidate, who gave Korea as an example of economic development, the newspaper said that Korea was America’s project nation and that the Asian nation was America’s forward operating base in the region.
The series of disparaging and distorted press reports appeared after Muharrem Ince, the political candidate endorsed by the main opposition, mentioned Korea as Turkey’s economic model in various interviews and election campaigns.
H. S. Seo (hsseo@koreabizwire.com)
