Viewers petitioning the Blue House to cancel Snowdrop
Added 2021-12-20 01:38:12 +0000 UTCI thought you guys might be interested to know that there is a chance that Snowdrop might go the way of Joseon Exorcist, and get canceled before completing its run. 😢
This isn't the first time k-netizens have petitioned for the cancelation of the show; there was an earlier petition, before the show started its run. At the time, jTBC assured everyone that there was no distortion of history in their story, and asked everyone to please be patient and watch the show before making a judgment.
The airing of the episodes has drawn some flak, because jTBC turned off the Talk feature on Naver's Snowdrop page, did not provide live-streaming of clips (which they usually do for dramas), and limited access to only live broadcast on jTBC, and delayed access via Disney+.
Clearly, this was jTBC's way of managing any recurrence of the negative comments that started the first petition, but that seems to have backfired, because this new petition garnered more than 200,000 signatures in 24 hours. 3 CF brand sponsors have also pulled out, so far.
The main concern is basically that the drama would distort history and undermine the value of the democratization movement at the time, in the eyes of the world at large. From Show's first episode alone, viewers are coming to the conclusion that Show is romanticizing the era in all the wrong ways.
No word yet on whether action will be taken against the show, but this storm is definitely brewing.
I haven't checked out the show myself, so I've got no personal opinion on this, except to say that I can see where this petition is coming from (there are a good number of undiscerning, impressionable viewers in the world, after all), but on the other hand, I hope that Show is given the chance to tell its story, instead of getting pulled off the air just when it's getting started.
KFG ❤️
Update (20 Dec, 10:20am):
Lee Tennant, whom you might've seen around the main blog, wrote an excellent post on her blog, explaining why Snowdrop is upsetting so many Koreans. You might like to check it out here.
Update (21 Dec, 2:00pm):
jTBC has responded with a statement, basically saying that the show isn't distorting history, but this will only become clear in later episodes. They are asking people to be patient and wait for the later episodes to air, which will purportedly put everything in perspective.
They have also said that they will open a real-time chat service, so that viewers can express their opinions, as the episodes air.
It's hard to say anything, without actually watching the show. The viewers are saying that Jung Hae In's character is a North Korean spy, but jTBC is saying that there is no spy leading the democratization movement in the show.
It's.. confusing, to say the least. But with this latest statement by jTBC, it is possible that Jung Hae In's character is only thought to be a North Korean spy, but actually isn't one..? 🤷🏻♀️
Article by koreaboo is here.
Comments
Unfortunately, I can't seem to be able to locate said article now, but for what it's worth it seemed pretty legit.
2021-12-20 22:32:07 +0000 UTCBy the way, when I was watching Youth of May I did a little research on the Internet to try to understand what happened in Korea in the 80s because obviously I knew more about Sejong the Great than modern Korean history. So I came across this article by a Korean history professor (or was it Korean-American?) according to which North Korean spies had indeed infiltrated the student movement in South Korea. I can't exclude the possibility that said professor is a revisionist (I don't have the knowledge to judge that) and it goes without saying that torture, extra judicial killings and forced disappearances would be unforgivable even if Kim Il-Sung himself was the movement's leader, but it does make me wonder if there really wasn't no infiltration at all as all those people that signed the petition seem to think. I mean, history, in its "nationally acknowledged" variety is tricky. I personally know quite a few people who refuse to acknowledge pretty certain stuff because it doesn't fit in with the widely accepted versions of history they have been made to believe by school, family or social class. That being said, the communist threat is such a convenient tool for a authoritarian regimes that I am sure that the government back then really exploited it in order to quash opposition, regardless of their real or perceived connection to the North.
2021-12-20 22:30:09 +0000 UTC@Julianne - thank you for the very thoughtful presentation of another perspective. It may well be that the detached, "just let it air and people can make up their own minds" point of view is not taking enough account of the details of the actual history, or the harms suffered by a previous generation. I will say that I am somewhat cautious about relying on petitions as a proxy for a broad-based plebiscite; in my experience, petitions, even ones that appear to get a lot of notice and signatures, are an indication that some segment of the population feels a certain way with an unknowable degree of passion... but again, should even a petition with a lot of signatures grant to government the power or justification to cause a show to be removed from the air? I'm pretty uncomfortable with allowing that course of action. So let me backtrack or at least revise a little bit: democratic societies in general erect structural protections for speech and other expression so that governments aren't tempted or able to suppress specific instances of unpopular expression when they arise, even when a majority in a specific situation might want them to. In this particular case, I don't know what the answer is, other than that I'm still uneasy about official government action being taken. But I do absolutely appreciate the point that's being made about whitewashing recent, painful history, and the danger of making something look romantic or complicated when it really wasn't, just because Jung Hae-in and Jisoo look really good dancing together. I get it. (This reminds me somewhat, by the way, of the furor a couple of years ago when Benioff and Weiss, the showrunners of Game of Thrones, announced their next project would be a show about an alternate history where the American Civil War ended in a stalemate, with slavery still existing in the South; the uproar that resulted from that announcement led to the project being cancelled before it ever got off the ground). At any rate, thank you again for the thoughtful discussion.
2021-12-20 19:41:34 +0000 UTCI also understand the desire for people to first see where the show is going. But for me personally I don’t see how the premise of the show could be saved as anything other than promoting authoritarian propaganda. Regardless of the show’s portrayals of NSA, the fact that the main character of the show IS a North Korean spy at all means the show is legitimizing the then-government’s reasons and justifications for wrongful torture and murder. It’s like, a show about a Japanese spy with an agenda in America during WW2 and that the US government was simply setting interment camps to catch the spies. Except that event was publicly and officially recognized as an act of war hysteria and racism and a mistake by the government. I’m not sure this situation in Korea has that level of public recognition of the facts to withstand this level of creative liberty.
Julianne
2021-12-20 18:36:19 +0000 UTC
