Korea’s right on the rise? Nope


This piece annoyed me because it was such a load of nonsense.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/south-koreas-right-wing-is-rising-and-could-scuttle-trumps-peace-with-kim-jong-un?ref=scroll

He wandered round Daejeon and found some people who want to kill Kim Jeong-Un so now the ‘right’ (applying western terms to a country with very different politics is something I generally avoid but that’s what Kirk does) is in the ascendancy apparently. Never mind that in party preference they are 10-15% behind in the polls or that the talks with North Korea remain overwhelmingly popular.  In Daejeon Liberty Korea are polling around 25%*- around where they have been polling for the last year. In the June 2018 Mayoral election, the Democrat got 56.4% of the vote beating Liberty Korea’s Park Seong-Hyo who got 32.2%. Liberty Korea are not on the rise in Daejeon or anywhere else. 

Of course the Liberty Party may come back. But it hasn't happened yet and no sign it is happening anytime soon. 

Publications that want to be taken seriously would not accept entirely anecdote driven accounts as representative of their own countries politics. They should hold their foreign correspondents to the same standard. 

 *these are crossbreaks which shouldn't be taken too seriously (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/collegeofjournalism/entries/1657a2d3-3173-304a-a909-9ae228b3629b see number 3) but even on this dubious metric there's no actual facts to back up Kirk's anecdotes! 

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