Of superheros and economic pundits

The Wired article actually depict Park in a sort of comic book-esque way

I found this article on Wired Magazine's site really interesting. The Troubles of Korea’s Influential Economic Pundit by Mattathias Schwartz is about a sort of nobody Korean guy, Park Dae-Sung, who took to writing anonymously about South Korea's economy and the recession and all that. His alias, Minerva, became super popular to the point where he was actually having an impact on the economy because people would invest or pull out based on his predictions. In the end he was found out and was tried in court. Now he's a nobody again.

It's a great article and I suggest reading it but what intrigued me wasn't so much the conspiracy or government involvement (Disclaimer: the Korea Government just started following Rory and I on Twitter @koreangov ;). What interested me was the concept of alter-egos.

Maybe it is my fascination with superheroes but when I read the story, I couldn't help but think of Clark Kent. A geeky farm boy disguise for an alien super dude who took to saving humanity. People loved Superman but no one really cared or knew about Clark Kent.  I guess Park was the opposite. He was a nobody who's alter ego was a celebrity. But really, how can people put so much trust in the anonymous predictions of someone who wasn't willing to show their face? Would something like that be possible in Canada I wonder...?

Spiderman on the other hand has always had what I believe is a more truthful depiction of an identity crisis in that the public is split between his heroic deeds and his need for secrecy. There is a lack of understanding and a lack of public trust about whether he truly has good intentions or that he is even qualified to save people. Police see him as a vigilante. JJJ thinks he's a menace. So then why were Koreans so easily trusting of someone who was hiding behind their monitor?

Peter couldn't always handle his superhero side

I think it is an interesting insight into Koreans and maybe even humans. What's your take?
Debate!

*For more information on Korea, feel free to check out a blog I put together with my fiancee for our wedding in Korea. There is some interesting information on Korea there.

Greased Lightbox

→←+-↻

Loading image

Click anywhere to cancel

Image unavailable

the good old days (when i was a nerd)

something strange happened to me today. i worked 15 hours at a frantic pace, stress levels brimming, yet still managed to make it to the grocery store before it closed. i needed water, you see. that's not what's strange.

the strange thing is i sort of spaced out for 20 minutes in the dairy section while looking for cream cheese. my mind went all fuzzy like the scrambled porn movies from a thousand confused boyhood nights. i just started thinking about bmx bikes, ball hockey and the D&D monster manual. basically i went back in time to my geeky childhood. it was great. i'm sure the people watching me stare blankly at grated mozzarella in a suit and tie thought i was on drugs but donnie darko would have been proud.

anyway, after coming out of it and resuming my shopping i passed by the magazine rack and saw a comic book sitting on a shelf. it was a newfangled x-men reprint of an old story i remember, rewritten in today's teen dialog of yos and wassups. again i was thrown back in time to the days i would push open the heavy door to my local comic shop, bell jingling, 10 bucks allowance gripped tight in my hand. i still have thousands of dollars worth of comics at my dad's place. maybe they are all water damaged now or disintegrated but i thought about how great it would be to just spend a day reading them all again, my trusty wizard guide always at the ready. so i went to the back of the magazine section and grabbed some comics thinking that maybe i would buy a couple to keep myself in this headspace a little longer. she-hulk, batman, x-men, new avengers and even a spider man were all screaming at me to buy them. and i was going to but for one small thing. i noticed that some stock boy had put a price sticker willy-nilly on the cover of all the comics. maybe i'm overeacting but where i come from, this is like letting a kid colour in a man ray photograph with crayons. i wasn't thinking of buying them as an investment like i did as a kid. but something inside me told me it was wrong. i couldn't do it and so i left with my cream cheese sans comics.

maybe it's great that in the middle east, kids never felt pressured to buy every first issue on the shelf. maybe they weren't worried about creasing pages whereas i would turn each one holding a tissue as not to put a finger print on them. but c'mon, you can't put a sticker on the cover, it's just against the universal comic book laws and everyone should know it. i'm kinda bummed out now because i was really looking forward to the new avengers.