New America Media, Interview, Aruna Lee, Posted: Jul 23, 2010

After 20 years spent in Korea, Oakland native Seo Banseok recently returned to the Bay Area, where he took a position as a reporter with the Korean language Korea Times -- an otherwise unremarkable story but for the fact that Seo is white. His American name is Peter Schroepfer, but like most foreigners who live long enough in Korea, he adopted a Korean name, Seo Banseok, which he now uses for all his articles at the Korea Times. As the first-ever non-Korean to work for the Korean language press inside as well as outside of Korea, Seo’s unique experience offers valuable insights into the strengths and shortcomings of not just Korean, but all ethnic media in the United States.

Q. Please explain what first brought you to Korea and why you returned to the U.S. with your family.

A. I went to Korea for a year of youth exchange in 1986, just one month after graduating from high school in Oakland. One thing led to another and I majored in Korean literature at a university in Seoul, and it's not uncommon to linger a lifetime in the city where one went to university. I feel privileged to have lived there during (the military) dictatorship in my late teens and to have been a part of so much change, especially while an undergraduate. I consider myself a participating member of Korean society. My wife, two children, and I came to the United States thinking we'd stay at least a few years so they could learn English and be close to my parents for a while. People often say we came "back" here but I'm the only one for whom that's true.

Q. What is your take on Korean media in the U.S.?

A. Korean language news media outside of Korea are often a world within themselves. On the one hand they have a greater role to play within the community, which otherwise would have to depend entirely on word of mouth. Awareness of this central role leads to things like the two competing Korean dailies in North America agreeing to never take advertising from casinos. Both papers desperately need the advertising, but chose not to accept any from casinos because of the belief it would be unhealthy for the community. It's nice to be in a news organization that suffers because of its own sense of mission, but for the same reason it's rare to see a reporter who is supporting a family manage to stay there very long.

Also, I learned to type and use word processors in Korean, but even now
I'm self-conscious about some types of writing in Korean, including some news formats. Some days I really have to stretch my brain, and stories in formats I'm not comfortable with end up requiring more review by my editor than they ever should in the first place, even if we did have dedicated proofreaders.

Q. As a minority within Korean media culture, what do you think can be done to address the lack of diversity within the industry?

A. Having diverse peoples and cultures reading mainstream news in English and French keeps the media in both languages on their feet and constantly examining their standards for diversity and plurality. This has only just ever so slightly begun to change for Koreans. In Korea proper, the public is often shocked to learn that the outside world is now monitoring its news outlets, and that the non-ethnic Koreans in Korean society are in on the conversation.

For Korean language news media in the United States, this is even more the case. They have a problem with what, for the lack of a better term, I will call “incestuous amplification,” or at least, a lack of diversity. All discourse is a conversation among people who came from the same part of the world, who immigrated to the same foreign country, and who are then raising children who belong to another language and culture.

That is quite a lot of life experience to have in common, and it is why the major themes of our coverage are largely predictable. Every day we have articles and columns by various experts about the practical logistics of achieving the American Dream, from taxes and real estate strategy to what kinds of volunteering will better your child's chances of gaining entrance into a prestigious American university.

Then we also spend a lot of time covering events within the community.
Just like the local paper in an American city with a population of under 50,000 is going to be full of stories about the swearing in of a new president at the Lion's Club and the 20th anniversary gala of the bingo club that meets weekly at the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Korean papers in America are full of stories about the community itself. I think this inevitably just has to be the basic staple, but with a tiny staff trying to cover any Korean event of this nature from Sacramento to Monterey, doing stories that provide analysis and perspective beyond the daily rat race often feels like a luxury.

Q. What’s been your most memorable experience working with the Korea Times?

Once I covered a ping pong tournament and a murder-suicide on the same day. However, most of what I cover are organized events like press conferences of all sorts, weekend Korean schools' fundraisers, ribbon-cutting ceremonies and other community events like what I've described. This year, there are three Korean-American women running for city council seats in the San Francisco Bay Area – the cities of Oakland, Fremont, and San Francisco, so lately I've been going to a lot of campaign events.

A lot of what I do on a daily basis is dig through hundreds of English media news articles and see if there is anything we need to convey to the first generation Korean-speaking public because no one else, like the South Korean wire services or our Los Angeles edition, is going cover them in Korean. So, for example, when the tolls on San Francisco Bay Area bridges are scheduled for an increase we have to cover that because, mundane as it might seem, conveying that really is a big service to the community.

I'm given a lot of leeway to take the initiative on issues that are important to me. Recently, Oakland was bracing for rioting in the wake of a police shooting trial. We would have covered what happened, but I wanted to cover what didn't happen, too. I sat in front of some boarded-up Korean businesses downtown for about five hours, because if anything actually did happen to those stores I wanted to be there.

Nothing did, thankfully, and the next morning I went back again to hear what the owners had to say. They were more concerned that the bad press would keep Koreans in other cities from coming to their shops in Oakland than about anything else. One Korean lady said it best: "People here don't riot like they do in L.A., but other Koreans in the San Francisco Bay Area don't know that, so we suffer." I made sure to quote Oakland police chief Anthony Batts when he said that three out of every four people arrested were from outside Oakland.


Q. Koreans are known for their ethnocentricity. Have you ever felt like an outsider among either your colleagues or others you’ve worked with?

I've had no problems in this regard. If anything, I feel like a burden because I don't write as quickly as everyone else, as if I'd be a good argument against affirmative action.