Talk:Public image of Lee Myung-bak

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Yikes[edit]

Found this page doing new page patrol. I'm not an expert in the field but it seems to be quite POV, even as "criticism of" articles go, and general consensus is generally against those anyway. Can someone with subject-area expertise take a look at it please? HominidMachinae (talk) 07:11, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Seriously, I'm all for fair criticism, but well over 50% of the references in this page is from far left Korean newspapers such as Hankyeoreh or Kyunghyang, of which combined has less than 5% of the newspaper market in South Korea. This page is basically a one man soapbox and is nowhere near wikipedias guidelines.(talk) 09:11, 25 Dec 2011 (UTC)

To be fair, even Chojoongdong (aka three biggest conservative newspapers in South Korea) is recently criticizing Lee Myung-bak. And let's not forget that Lee's closest associate, Choi See-Joong, may officially support the Lee-friendly Chojoongdong, but he's under attack of briberies from his assistance. Things are not looking good for Lee Myung-bak from both the leftist and rightist newspapers. I may be a Chinese-Filipino with a Sino-ized Korean-American mother, but I know from my ethnic Korean relatives that Lee is absolutely hopeless. No offense to the President Lee. Let us never forget that the Korean version of this article is non-POV according to the Korean Wikipedia guidelines, but it pretty much has Hankyeoreh or Kyunghyang as its major sources for citations. Komitsuki (talk) 14:33, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Then again, it doesn't seem right to cite from an article from Chojoongdong (Chosun Ilbo, Joongang Ilbo and Dong-a Ilbo). Chojoongdong is affiliated with Korea Communications Commission (and KCC is affiliated with Korea Communications Standards Commission), a very powerful presidential organization that promotes internet censorship like what China is doing right now. Even the Electronic Freedom Foundation is criticizing Lee Myung-bak for this. Sorry to say but.... Citing censorship-loving Chojoongdong articles as reliable sources is very unsuitable for Wikipedia. You know what? The English Wikipedia seldom uses Xinhua, a champion of the Great Firewall of China, as news sources for China-related articles. Komitsuki (talk) 14:49, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And ShinVeritas, you forgot I also got my sources from Yonhap News and NoCut News, two conservative media outlets in South Korea. So I don't use 100% of sources from far left Korean newspapers. Strangely enough, even conservative newspapers are criticizing Lee way too much these days. So, don't worry about it. Komitsuki (talk) 15:05, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Seriously Komitsuki, what you say has little merit. You say the Chojoongdong is affiliated to the government??? Wheres the evidence? Proof? The 3 most well read, independently owned newspapers in a democratic country are controlled by the government? A lot of Korean people suspect the Kyunghyang and Hankyeoreh are secretly controlled by North Korea but I don't spread wild rumors like that. Saying we should not cite Chojoongdong who are more than 50% of the Korean market is like saying Americans should not cite ABC, CBS, and NBC. And your non-Hankyeoreh/Kyunghyang sources are very little, almost all the blatant criticism is from the two papers. I don't care if your Korean, American, Chinese or Filipino as long as your bring a unbiased viewpoint or fair criticism which frankly, you don't. " but I know from my ethnic Korean relatives that Lee is absolutely hopeless". This comment alone shows how biased you are, and frankly there is no place on Wikipedia for that. ShinVeritas (talk) 04:57, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You're also guilty too for bluntly saying very negative things about me just because I contributed something with citations. Komitsuki (talk) 01:11, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

But these days, I'm really liking you very much. In one way, you seem to promote this unusually strange South Korean government. In another way, you seem to promote negative impressions against it. I can't complain except the insults towards me. Komitsuki (talk) 01:17, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Komitsuki you are an embarassment to Wikipedia. I really don't care about what you think of the korean government, President Lee may be a bad guy or he may not be. I DONT CARE. Keep your personal opinions and biases out of Wikipedia. Your distortions are worthy of FOX News. Meme3234 (talk) 05:22, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just for the record, Komitsuki cited one article from "Voice of People (민중의 소리; Minjung-ui sori)", a very far-left newspaper. "Minjung" ("People" in English) is only used by labor union activist or protesters. In addition, Komitsuki also cited Media Today, View&News, Pressian, and OhMyNews, all of which have a liberal bias of varying degrees. --- PBJT (talk) 07:25, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Neutrality Dispute[edit]

Added the Neutrality Dispute flag as much of the vicious charges are from the Kyunghyang and Hankyeoreh far left newspapers. Plus, there is no attempt at covering the other point of view, much taking allegations as fact, some content can be categorized as personal attacks, and almost the entire entry is written by one person, with the exception of those trying to correct the biased parts.

For a small example, in the very beginning of the entry, there is unreferenced criticism of Lee failing to control inflation. Yet further down in '2012 control of consumer prices', it criticized Lee of controlling prices(to stop inflation).

Failed policies that Lee undoubtedly took part in has been written that he led them, controversies against the government have suddenly been warped into criticism against Lee personally by whomever added the content, etc etc — Preceding unsigned comment added by ShinVeritas (talk • contribs) 05:31, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]


I've done about a 70% sweep of this entry and its references, and am beyond shocked how much distortion, exaggeration, outright fabrication, and personal opinion/bias was blatantly displayed. I've fixed or removed much of the more obvious content.

Anyone able to read Korean is invited to take a look at this entry, and any changes I have made. If the changes made seem biased please remove them.

Again, most criticism with valid references have been left untouched. More revisions and other points of view will be needed before this article can be called neutral. ShinVeritas (talk) 09:18, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Step 1: Check User:ShinVeritas. Step 2: Find out that there is no reference to his Korean language ability. Step 3: Assume that he has a secret agenda to promote Lee's image. ShinVeritas must be hired from the Korean government. Congratulations. Komitsuki (talk) 00:54, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Rather than argue with someone who has, in my opinion, knowingly broken a huge number of wikipedia rules in this entry alone and can't seem to stop himself from ridiculous accusations, I welcome anyone who is fluent in Korean to view the changes made by myself, and compare them with the content by User:Komitsuki, and judge/fix anything they deem as breaking the rules. ShinVeritas (talk) 01:43, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'll make this clear. I have nothing against your edits these days. My only complaint is your aggressive attitude against me. Personal note: should I trust an American? Komitsuki (talk) 01:50, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK I apologize if I have said anything personally negative about you, although honestly, honestly, I'm trying to figure out what exactly I said was so bad. ShinVeritas (talk) 02:25, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A simple apology is always better than nothing. Komitsuki (talk) 13:14, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

ShinVeritas don't apologize. What Komitsuki is doing is clearly wrong, he only gets away with it because korean related stuff it outside the expertise of most english language wikipedia users. Komitsuki is just some left-wing nut. Notice the "Should I trust an American" comment.Meme3234 (talk) 05:26, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You know, what I'm doing is very right. What can I do? The South Korean conservative newspapers are bashing Lee Myung-bak right now. I mostly cite from Yonhap News, a conservative news source in South Korea. I officially subscribed to Paleoconservatism in an American sense. Does that make me sound as some kind of "left wing nut"? I'm not sure about what you're saying because you sound too emotional right now. I hope you can show a better attitude to others next time. Komitsuki (talk) 18:08, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I did a tally of the references and by far the most commonly cited news source you've given is the Hankyoreh, and I'm sure you're well aware of the left-wing political orientation of that newspaper (on a cursory tally I counted 17 references to the Hankyoreh, compared with 8 to the Korea Times and Yonhap News respectively). Your political orientation is, of course, in any case irrelevant. What is relevant is that you have consistently and misleadingly presented editorial analysis by outside sources as being encyclopedic fact, and have failed, in most cases, to cite a) the source for the relevant analysis in the text of the article itself and b) more than one analysis at all. As I noted in another article, all the sources given are editorial and none are academic or politically uninvolved. (Also see all sections under "Words that may introduce bias" at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch.) --Tyrannus Mundi (talk) 19:45, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

While I disagree that Komitsuki is a "nut", it is fairly obvious that he has given a quite heavily left-wing slant on what he's written. Since there aren't many people well-versed in South Korean politics on Wikipedia, as you point out, this presents a problem. I don't claim to be an expert, and this isn't directly my specialism, but I'm going to go through and carefully review the factual accuracy and POV of this and the main article. --Tyrannus Mundi (talk) 04:22, 27 March 2012 (UTC) — Also this is quite clearly a POV fork and violates WP:Criticism. I have taken the liberty of moving it to a suitable title along the lines of (e.g.) Public image of Barack Obama. --Tyrannus Mundi (talk) 04:54, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yonhap News[edit]

Someone argued that Yonhap news is a conservative news outlet, but it is a false claim. Yonhap (translated as "associated" in Korean) is South Korean version of Associated Press, and no one says that AP is a conservative or liberal media. Same for the Yonhap news, and both liberal and conservative media cite Yonhap frequently. PBJT (talk) 02:48, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm led to believe that it's not precisely the same in that Yonhap is more of an independent news agency producing its own stories than AP is, but you're probably correct. As I said, though, it's really not relevant as far as this discussion is concerned, since the references are predominantly from Hankyoreh (which does have a well-known political orientation) rather than Yonhap anyway. --Tyrannus Mundi (talk) 02:56, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your comment, Tyrannus Mundi. I know Yonhap news's political orientation is irrelevant here. But this is not the first time Komitsuki claimed that Yonhap is a conservative news, and I wanted to correct his false claim. Like you said, there could be small differences between AP and Yonhap, but Yonhap is trying to match AP's journalism standard. And in many cases, both Chosun and Hankyoreh publishes articles from Yonhap whenever they want to report breaking news and yet they don't have any reporters on that event. PBJT (talk) 03:20, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks likewise for clearing this point up. --Tyrannus Mundi (talk) 04:05, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Lee Myung-bak, an International figure?[edit]

I searched many politician's articles in wikipedia and very few have an article dedicated to their public image. In fact, only (correct me if I'm wrong.) American politicians have articles of their public image. Even those widely-known world figures like Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair don't have one. So my question is, do we need this article in English wikipedia? Is Lee Myung-bak a better known leader than the Prime minister of U.K. or Japan (arguably more important and better known leaders.)?

This article is clearly about "public image of Lee Myung-bak in South Korea" since the English speaking world doesn't have much opinion about him as to characterize his image. Moreover, it presents only a SK liberal's point of view on Mr. Lee. Much of the article can be merged into Lee Myung-bak government: many sections are dealing with the Lee government's policy. PBJT (talk) 12:10, 26 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Calling a political leader, a rat or a bastard (subsection "May 2011 Twitter Incident", 2MB18nomA) isn't criticism in any sense. (Notice that number 18 in Korean pronounced as a f-word, and that "nom" can be translated to "bastard" in English. 2MB is a popular initial for Mr. Lee. Again, Number 2 pronounced as "Lee" in Korean.) PBJT (talk) 12:30, 26 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's only here because it can't be dedicated to Criticism of Lee Myung-bak per WP:Criticism, WP:POV fork and WP:Living. Clearly though this article isn't much better as it stands and is arguably much worse since it is now even more obviously POV. I'm not sure it's necessary to redirect it to "... in South Korea", because that would only be necessary if it needed to be disambiguated from another page, which it does not, like you said. The article as a whole should probably be merged into Lee Myung-bak government (but that article also serves as a list of criticisms of Lee anyway at the moment). — Tyrannus Mundi 21:30, 27 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merger proposal[edit]

See Talk:Lee Myung-bak government --— Tyrannus Mundi 21:39, 27 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Removing POV sections[edit]

I had hoped either to remove this article from Wikipedia or to merge the article to Lee Myung-bak government. Both of them cannot be done in any time soon, so I decided to remove POV sections that I found to be the contributor's personal opinion. There's no doubt that this article is Full of POV, and people pointed out that its due to the fact that the article cites mostly the liberal media, like the Hankyoreh. The main contributor even claimed that Yonhap News is a conservative one and since he included Yonhap, it's not biased. Well, I came to the conclusion that the main contributor didn't cite sources accurately and even added his own opinion to the sourced Korean articles.

  • Foreign Image: this Hankyoreh article was written in 21 December 2007, just after Lee was elected as the next president. Lee officially took office in February 2008. There's no way Lee have created a rising inflation or encountered with political-level scandals when he wasn't President. The cited article only mentioned that both Kakuei Tanaka and Lee's nickname is "bulldozer", which they acquired during their Business career. Thus, all the added words are the contributor's own opinion.
  • Manufacturing 'Nice' Internet Comments: It is true some members of this non-profit organization, Good Comment Movement(선플달기운동본부), left a favorable comments on Lee. But according to the cited No-cut news, these netizens commented on Lee's visit to a Baseball game. Comments like "Lee and his wife looks good together", "It's good to see you're having a good time with your family" or "You look kind to your wife" are by no means political. The organization wasn't created to improve Lee's public image. Its goal is emphasizing civility and etiquette in online communities. Without providing this background information, the contributor presented it as a politically-motivated incident.
  • May 2011 Twitter Incident: Like I mentioned earlier in a separate discussion, "18nomA" is a highly inappropriate vulgar. Restricting the use of vulgar as the twitter account name has little to do with restricting the freedom of speech. On the contrary, South Korean netizens have full freedom of speech, and the Korean twitter is filled with anti-Lee rhetoric without any restriction.
  • Sending Money to North Korea: Most money sent to North Korea during Lee government was the wages of Kaesong Industrial Region workers. The joint-venture between the North and South was started during the Roh Moo-hyun government, and those firms were already in business when Lee took office. Same for the Jeju naval base. The plan was announced in 2007, Roh Moo-hyun's last year as the President. How could we blame Lee for environmental problems when he simply continued Roh's plan?

The list goes on, and I personally think this article is a hate speech, rather than criticism. It is clear that the main contributor didn't cite the source accurately or even distorted the meaning simply because many Wikipedians here cannot verified the Korean text or are unwilling to document his/her deliberate error. I would argue that the only relevant section in the article is the "Negative Image" part. Sections like "Media Freedoms", "Administration Issues" or "Ignoring Pledges" should be included in the Lee Myung-bak government. --- PBJT (talk) 23:45, 16 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

South Korean netizens have full freedom of speech
This is very disturbing response, don't you think? This may be an article from last year but you can see that the the press freedom in South Korea is falling a lot. This is same goes to the freedom of speech. You can blame me all you want, PeanutbutterjellyTaco, but the truth sides with me. And please stop with the insults that I promote hate speech. The only insult I can see is from you. Komitsuki (talk) 14:10, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I can think of an another way. It says something like "South Korea, which had long hovered at the low end of the `free’ range, slipped by two points, from 30 to 32, earning it a `partly free’ designation. Contributing factors included an increase in official censorship as well as government attempts to influence news and information content," Freedom House said. Guess what? I don't see anything wrong with putting biased explanations (according to you) sourced from fully biased Korean newspapers. The whole country (South Korea) is fully biased. (Honestly this does make me think that my Korean heritage is rationally shameful and I think every Korean should think the same like me.) Even the Tagalog, Korean, and Japanese Wikipedias pretty much accept biased articles. And I don't think that neutral academic sources on modern Korean politics are acceptably common. So, please stop being biased when you claim that you're unbiased. Komitsuki (talk) 14:24, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks for joining the discussion Komitsuki. Also, I'm sorry that if my comment have insulted you and you felt that way. My comment was about the quality of the article, and wasn't intended to criticize its contributor. Yes, I can be be biased with my own perspective on South Korean politics and its leaders, but I didn't push my POV in the article. I have a lot to add to your response, but let me focus on the main issue here. Below is a quote from the "Similarities to foreign leaders" section before I removed the whole section.:

"According to Mainichi Shimbun, Lee Myung-bak is similar to the controversial former Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka in that both of them proposed an extensive sociopolitical remodeling of their respective countries, encountered many political-level scandals, and failed to stop rising inflation".

When I actually checked the cited Hankyoreh news, it didn't mention that Lee Myung-bak have failed to curb inflation or met with political scandals. In fact, it says both leader's nickname is same, and continued to say that Kakuei Tanaka's policy was controversial in Japan. So it makes me wonder where the second part of quoted sentence (in italic) was from? I assumed either you cited a wrong article (since it doesn't support the claim) or you added your personal opinion.
Overall, this article is (1) poorly organized, and (2) biased mainly because it selectively presents negative views and doesn't provide any of competing views on Lee. --- PBJT (talk) 20:21, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright infringement[edit]

This is a quote from the cited NY times article:

"Hong Jong-ho, an economist at Hanyang University, said the canal would create an environmental disaster that would worsen flooding and pollute the two rivers that supply drinking water for two-thirds of the nation’s 49 million people. He also said the waterway would be the most expensive construction project in South Korean history, costing as much as $50 billion.… Buddhist groups that have voiced fears that it would submerge nearby Buddhist relics."

The following is from the article's Canal section:

"Hong Jong-ho, an economist at Hanyang University, has claimed that the Grand Korean Waterway would create an environmental disaster that would worsen flooding and pollute the two rivers that supply drinking water for two-thirds of the country's population. He also said the waterway would be the most expensive construction project in South Korean history, costing as much as $50 billion. Buddhist groups have voiced fears that it would submerge nearby Buddhist relics,"

The three sentences in question are an exact match, with words like "said", "canal" and "nation's 49 million people" have been replaced. Should this contents to be removed or rewritten? --- PBJT (talk) 22:31, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Firing Chung Yeon-ju and Chojoongdong Connection[edit]

  • KBS and Chung Yeon-ju
KBS is a public broadcasting network in South Korea, and it is owned by the government. Appointing someone who has a ties with Lee Myung-bak as the KBS president isn't illegal, even though firing Chung Yeon-ju before his term is ended was controversial. Let me say a few things about Chung Yeon-ju. Before he became the president of KBS, he was the editor-in-chief of the Hankyoreh newspaper. During 2002 Presidential campaign period, he actively criticized the conservative candidate Lee Hoi-chang and his sons being exempted from military service. Supporting Roh Moo-hyun's campaign have brought him a KBS president job in April 2003, even though he had never worked for the network. While he was the president, KBS was practically the media arm of Roh Moo-hyun government. In other words, if we criticize Lee Myung-bak for firing KBS president, then we should criticize all his predecessors for doing the same.
Chosun Ilbo, JoongAng Ilbo and DongA Ilbo are the three major newspapers in South Korea, and they are well-known for their conservative editorial stance. "Chojoongdong" was critical of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun government, and sided with the opposition GNP. They favored Lee Myung-bak and GNP during 2007 Presidential campaign, just like the Hankyoreh, Kyunghyang Shinmun, and Ohmynews supported the Democratic party. Chojoongdong didn't give up their conservative bias after Lee took office, thus they might be less critical of Lee compared to other liberal media. To be fair, Roh Moo-hyun personally supported the Hankyoreh and donated part of his salary to the newspaper during his presidency. And he never hide it. Should we say Roh Moo-hyun enjoyed a close connection with Hankyoreh and Kyunghyang? If you think Hankyoreh, Kyunghyang and Ohmynews is less powerful than Chojoongdong alliance, then add in KBS and MBC broadcasting.
  • Cronyism

"There are approximately 300 people associated with Lee Myung-bak who take positions in governmental agencies and corporations as of February 2011." — a quote from Cronyism section.

Again, appointing someone who are associated with Lee isn't illegal. In fact, he has the right to do so as the President and the next President, either a liberal or conservative, will do the exactly same. Lee Myung-bak appointed many Korea University alumni, Somang Church-goers and people from Yeongnam (Ko-So-Yeong; 고-소-영) in his cabinet. He should be criticized if those Ko-So-Yeong people are not qualified for the job and yet he appointed them. Nevertheless, all his predecessors did the same: During Kim Young-sam's presidency, many people from Busan and South Gyeongsang Province worked for the government. Kim Dae-jung promoted people from Jeolla Province in all public sector. A Roh Moo-hyun's high school senior, Lee Seong-tae, was the governor of Bank of Korea between 2006 and 2010.

I'm not proposing to hide all the bad things about Lee Myung-bak. Rather, I want the article to be balanced: If liberal/democrats did the same thing, they should be criticized and mentioned in their article as well. Without mentioning South Korean political landscape, portraying Lee as a horrible president is a bias. --- PBJT (talk) 23:42, 18 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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