with

Donald Kirk
Journalist and Author

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

3:00 PM-3:30 PM ♦ Registration and Reception
3:30 PM-4:30 PM ♦ Presentation and Q&A

The Korea Society 950 Third Avenue, Eighth Floor, New York City
(Building entrance on SW corner of Third Avenue and 57th Street)

Korea is the land of the morning calm, but when Americans have watched news of it, they’ve seen images of war, civil unrest and financial meltdown. The problem? Korea has traditionally been seen by Western media as a “crisis story.” This has been the pattern for over a century. In 1871, the first ever U.S. journalist to visit Korea, photo-engraver Felice Beato, rushed to cover the Kanghwa Island skirmishes—and coverage continued through the Russo-Japanese War. Then foreign journalists lost interest in Korean events and left. They returned intermittently, but only when potential headlines were exciting enough—during the Korean War, the upheaval of the 1980s and the nuclear crisis of the 1990s. Throughout, sustained, context-heavy reportage has been missing. Veteran Korea correspondent and author Donald Kirk will explain the attitudes and actions behind the Western news media’s uneven coverage of Korea as detailed in his new book, Korea Witness: 135 Years of War, Crisis and News in the Land of the Morning Calm. 

About the Speaker

Donald Kirk has been reporting from Asia since 1972. In addition to his forthcoming book, he is the author of Korean Crisis: Unraveling the Miracle in the IMF Era and Korean Dynasty: Hyundai and Chung Ju Yung. From 1997 through 2003, Kirk was the Seoul correspondent for the International Herald Tribune. Kirk’s articles have appeared in The Asian Wall Street Journal, South China Morning Post, Newsday, The Nation and National Review.