User:Sugarysky

Bio

About Me

I am a college student, currently living in Washington State. I am interested in Tropical Fishes, Herbal Medicine, Angentine Tango and Spanish Literature. I play the piano, and I hope someday I could play and sing myself the Tango masterpieces of Carlos Gardel –  “Mi Buenos Aires querido”, “El dia que me quieras”. Of course, it would take a strenuous effort, as Don Quixote states “Del dicho al hecho hay un gran trecho” (“From word to deed is a great space”).

My Wikipedia Interests

I have been frequently using Wikipedia to gather basic information and references about Alternative/Herbal Medicine and Medicinal Plants. Herbal Teas and Traditional Chinese Medicine are the areas I frequent the most. Their Therapeutic Effects and Adverse Reactions are specifically attracting my interest. Traditional Chinese Medicine have been searching for the ways of explaining their therapeutic mechanism in terms of Modern Western Medicine. One of the proposed hypothesis is that the yin-yang balance corresponds to the pro-oxidant and antioxidant balance.

Article Evaluation

Gimbap has been my favorite snack since my childhood. It has been one of the most beloved traditional snacks to all Koreans in all kind of life events. As a Gimbap lover, I got curious how much interest this Korean staple is attracting from people around the world. Since I started learning about Wikipedia in class, I wondered whether anybody had posted an article on it yet; if so, how accurate that information would be. Very interestingly, an article already exists and it has gone through many comments and editing for the last sixteen years. I visited the Gimbap page on Wikipedia, and found three aspects of it worth commenting on: a heavily biased claim, its lack of citations and dead links, and wrong citations.

Heavily Biased Claim

The paragraph explaining “Cultural signifier of poverty” is not coherent and shows personal views loaded with bias. There are no citations justifying the relationship Korean people see between Gimbap street vendors and beggars, buskers and prostitutes. Born and raised in the Korean culture, I had not heard comments of this tone so far regarding Gimbap street vendors. There are even more comments on the statement, such as “whole Gimbap street vendor is seen as the final noble and dignified form of busking … that family members of affected people, can do to get out of poverty”. To stay in the article, this content requires a citation justifying what is a “Final Noble and dignified form of busking” to Koreans, and why specifically Gimbap street vendors (not cookie, popsicle, ramen, corn street vendors or any other kind of street vendors) are regarded as “last resort of busking to get out of poverty”. The entire paragraph is harboring logical leaps without grounds.

Lack of Citations and Dead Links

Besides the lack of citations pointed out above (with the biased claims), the same paragraph lacks reference in the claim that “vendors often sell and eat gimbap as an entire log, even after they are out of poverty or emergency. Selling whole also extends shelf life, and signifies longevity“. The Citation 19 and 20 are YouTube clips that expired (dead links), so I do not see any justification that Gimbap as an “entire log (whole, uncut)” means “longevity”. If that belief is true among Koreans, the impression of street vendors eating it in “entire log (longevity)” does not align with the image of “busker-like miserable street vendors”, as the writer claims.

Wrong Citations

Reference 13 is a CNN website introducing top 23 street food cities around the world, and has no mentioning at all about Korea or Gimbap; a fake citation is linked to Gimbap filling ingredients.

Reference 12 is a CNN website marketing some Korean Street Food stores located in Seoul with their addresses on it; it is totally irrelevant as a citation to the Origin of Gimbap (“the food was developed from the local tradition of rolling bap (cooked rice) and banchan (side dishes) in gim.^” ).

Reference 10 and 11 are wrong citations to the claim “Koreans introduced the concept to Japan during the Baekjae period” : Reference 10 is an encyclopedia regarding China-India relations with Japan and has nothing to do with the Korean Ancient Baekjae Empire (BC 18 – AD 660).  Reference 11 is a book on Traditional Korean Culture. It does not show any traces of Baekjae introducing the concept of Gimbap to Japan. To the opposite, I found an article in “The Korea Times” dated March 23, 2007, (http://m.koreatimes.com/article/20070323/372752) stating that a Japanese Dr. Ohusa Tsuyoi mentioned on his book “Sea Vegetables” that Japan started eating Gim(seaweed) since the Edo period (Tokugawa period) (1603 - 1868). This had been about 10-12 centuries "after" the Korean Baekjae Empire vanished. Therefore, the author failed to provide records or evidence supporting his claim that Baekjae Empire introduced Gimbap to Japan before its collapse in AD 660.

Conclusion

This article was found to be inappropriate as a reliable source of information in Wikipedia. It was composed of false information with wrong citations, missing citations and dead links, with a heavily biased point of view at the end. Referenced citations and links are mainly in Korean Language, so probably the author assumed that readers around the world would not understand Korean and therefore, would not verify the source’s credibility. Posting personal opinions with missing or wrong sources of information is exposing global, Korean-illiterate readers to a misleading concept on this traditional Korean snack. For those wanting to know Korean food culture, the author needs to reflect on his/her responsibility of providing the right information in a neutral tone.