Differences

My writer is a Korean who was adopted by an American family when he was just a few years old. It's funny because most of the time I feel so American, but in comparison to him, I'm definitely more Korean.

But, really, considering I was raised by Koreans and he was raised by white Americans, it only makes sense.

Then when I think about who his best friends are here, and who my best friends are here, he is mainly friends with foreigners and a few Koreans, and he speaks English with all of them. My closest friends are mainly gyopos (Korean-Americans, Korean-Canadians, etc.), and I have Korean friends who I mainly speak Korean with.

So, when I think about it, he is basically a white dude inside an Asian shell, which is funny because it's kind of how I used to see myself. But, let's get real, considering I was raised by Koreans and within different Korean community groups, and he wasn't at all, and I spoke to my parents in Korean ever since I was a baby and he basically doesn't know Korean, we are definitely coming from different places.

So when he writes the script, while he does pretend to be me and tries to write it from my point of view (as he's told me), of course, since it's really just his perception of what my viewpoint is, there are still things that he writes into the script that I don't agree with. (It's only natural that this would happen since none of us can read minds.) That's the reason I come in an hour-and-a-half early and edit the script myself.

The first thing I ever came across that made me realize how differently our minds work was that in the script, my writer had written a few different Korean idioms and expressions along with the explanations behind them. One of the expressions had to do with noses, and at the end of the paragraph he wrote, "Hmm, maybe that's why all the girls here get plastic surgery on their nose."

Now, the script is written from scratch, so as an idea arises in his mind, he has the choice to either write that in or leave it out, so in this case, I guess he decided to write in the line about the girls' and their noses. But let's remember that HE is not the one who is supposed to read that on air. It's me. So I would make myself, the show, and essentially the station look like a jackass if I said something like that. But let's look at the other issue, which is that I am a female. And in our female world, plastic surgery is a sensitive issue. Especially here in Korea it's a sensitive issue, and I'm not sure why a dude would just throw that in there like that. And, of course, I deleted that. It was just too insensitive and tasteless in my opinion. On top of that, my government-required, government-sponsored program does not need to proactively be pissing people off.

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The other thing that made me realize how differently we think was when my writer wrote about how here in Korea if someone's name is Lee Minjoo, then in the west, their name would be Minjoo Lee because "Minjoo" is their first name and "Lee" is their family name. So he went on to write something like this: "For the sake of avoiding confusion when exposed to foreign media, Koreans should just present their name as 'Minjoo Lee' instead of 'Lee Minjoo.' I propose that we do it the foreign way so that we follow a standard procedure."

This angered me because he was saying these people should just go ahead and cater to the foreign way of doing things. My producer also thought that was insensitive, and when we said, "We're going to rewrite this part because it seems kind of insensitive," he said, "Huh? But I thought I said that in a sensitive way." ...
Anyway.

So I rewrote it to say something along the lines of, "Any Korean celebrities out there, just be aware that when you are exposed to foreign media, there is probably going to be confusion about which part of your name is your family name or given name. To avoid confusion, some Korean stars may simply choose to present themselves with their first name first and family name second, but if you don't want to do that, I totally understand about presenting your true name and sticking to your Korean roots."

All in all, it's a production, it's a collaboration, so rewrites, editing, disagreements are going to happen. No matter what we try to put on the best possible show we can. If only it could be painless each time.