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South Korean Cartoonists Cry Foul Over Edgy Simpsons Intro
theodp writes "When asked to animate a dark commentary about labor practices in Asia's cartoon industry — the edgy title sequence for the Simpsons' episode 'MoneyBART' — staff from the South Korean production company Akom raised a rare protest. Even after being toned down, the sequence created by British graffiti artist Banksy depicted a dungeon-like complex where droning Asian animators worked in sweatshops, rats scurried around with human bones, kittens were spliced up into Bart Simpson dolls, and a gaunt unicorn punched holes into DVDs. The satire, Akom founder and president Nelson Shin argued, gave the impression that Asian artists slave away in subpar sweatshops when they actually animate much of The Simpsons every week in high-tech workshops in downtown Seoul. Still, South Korean animators make one-third the salaries of their American counterparts, and Shin declined to comment on the full extent of the work his company has outsourced to SEK, a state-run animation studio of North Korea. Some argue that the Banksy sequence's gray and forlorn atmosphere more accurately depicts the sweatshop-like conditions in North Korea."
Those Asians are just too goddamn sensitive.
Nobody actually thought they were using unicorns to make DVDs.
Laugh. It's a cartoon.
South Korea often gets downplayed, and I'm not sure why. After having lived in Korea for three years, I've got to say that Seoul is just as advanced as any other city I've visited, and in some ways, more so. (And in some ways, less so. But, well. You win some, you lose some.) I'll admit that the minimum wage here is pretty ridiculously tiny compared to back home, but even so, the standard of living is pretty damned decent.
I'd love to live in Seoul. It's so vibrant, and the newest apartment complexes are ridiculously nice. Too bad they're also ridiculously expensive, even by North American standards.
I didn't think the intro was specifically directed at Korea, but just sweat shops in general. Although I'm sure North Korea is nothing short of horrible.
We need to take a stand and start producing cartoons in sweatshops here in America!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Hell, if they won't do anything about North Korea murdering dozens of their people in the sub attack, they won't do anything about a silly comic.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
and Shin declined to comment on the full extent of the work his company has outsourced to SEK, a state-run animation studio of North Korea
The hallmark of outsourcing, dishonesty. Shin needs to come clean first.
That's what you get for Third World offshoring. Yes, that means South Korea too.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Shin was disappointed. The satire, he and other animators have since argued, gave the impression that Asian artists slave away in subpar sweatshops when, in fact, they animate much of The Simpsons every week in high-tech workshops in downtown Seoul. "Most of the content was about degrading people from Korea, China, Mexico and Vietnam," Shin fumed. "If Banksy wants to criticize these things ... I suggest that he learn more about it first."
Perhaps Shin should learn more about the First World, and what it knows about those countries. It isn't good.
Besides, if Banksy went to do his research, he'd get endless varieties of the same Potemkin Village. Not the actual conditions that Shin is wrong about on the large scale..
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The problem is that they're "among, not "are". More people in the US/UK get what those countries reserve for the few and well connected.
In the US, we don't need Potemkin Villages, but those countries sure do.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Does anyone in Korea understand what SATIRE fucking is?
Can we stop comparing wages based on actual dollar figures, and compare based on standard of living (or something else)?
I make 25% less as a System Administrator in a small remote town than were I working in downtown Toronto.
But my house costs $200,000 as opposed to $1,000,000 for a house or condo in Toronto. Do I bitch that I don't make the same wage? No, because overall I I have the same standard of living / quality of life as everyone else (even better, I have a place to park!).
Yes, food costs about the same (maybe 3% less), cars cost the same, etc, but when a good 40% of what I spent my income on (house, property taxes) is far less, it works.
The last decade seems to have passed me by.
TYIA
Moneybart intro
"Shin declined to comment on the full extent of the work his company has outsourced to SEK, a state-run animation studio of North Korea."
O RLY?
Seems to me that the gentleman doth protest too much.
...it's just another Simpson's Halloween "horror" story.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
What blows my mind is that there is a supposed "animation studio" in North-frickin-Korea. I thought they barely even had electricity up there, much less any sort of higher technology trade going on with the rest of the world. Interesting. Shows what I know.
For those who don't live in the Glorious US blessed it be thy name and can't view the video due to annoying IP Restrictions here a link
"It's so vibrant, and the newest apartment complexes are ridiculously nice."
What's so nice about them?
..has done it too, and I'm sure there were others. So why single out The Simpsons? Seems stupid, especially when outsourcing to NK.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
It wasn't South Korea in the cartoon, it was China. South Korea doesn't have pandas. (They do have unicorns, but that's a state secret.)
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
> I'm pretty sure that was f-in hilarious!
What are you talking about?
There's no f in hilarious...
Man everyone needs to lighten up. Anyone else old enough to remember the Bloom County parody "Who plugged Mortimer Mouse"? He had Disney characters chained to drawing boards drawing Rodger Rabbit cartoons. I doubt anyone actually thought they had Disney characters drawing big busted women. I think the Simpson's parody was more about South East Asia in general and not so much South Korea. A lot of what goes on in China is about that bad but they wanted to do a Simpson's parody and they don't do the animation in China.
Actually, I moved from Toronto to a rather small town too. One thing I've found about the big city is that you really get *screwed* if you're working on salary (which is pretty much the norm). So while you may be making less per-annum, you may actually be making more overall depending on how much extra-time you put in.
As for the costs. Food seems a bit more where I am (no local Chinese market), but not incredibly much. A car may cost the same or a bit more, gas is a little higher, but the cost of insurance is nearly *HALF* that of a bigger city. Houses are obviously cheaper, and parking is free, but that does come as a trade-off for crappy transit. Not that I consider the TTC to be overly great, but at least it took me under an hour to get to work downtown by transit (despite being almost in Scarborough, at the edge of Toronto).
Another big factor is the people. In many big cities the overall attitude seems to be "everyone for himself" followed by that others are fair game. In a smaller city, choices are less, but those who actively screw over the customers tend fare less well. Customer-friendly businesses also tend to get good word-of-mouth.
There are some things I miss about the bigger city, but there's a lot to be said for smaller places too.
No. You see, son, unicorns have these horns and .. The life and death of unicorns depicted. Not advisable for little girls.
Also, the title of the anime seems misspelled.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
"Still, South Korean animators make one-third the salaries of their American counterparts"
Er... what American counterparts?
copy a 17 M3g file BE NIGGER! BE GAY!
... enought said.
Everything from story line, story boads, concepts, stype, production, in-beteens, financial agreements, Seiyu ... the list goes on and on.
This is because of the Japanese Government Colonization and Subjugation Policies from the following the Sino-Russia War and the Annexation of South Korea and Manchuria by Japan in the late 1930's. The Deit of Post-War II Japan still has a 1930's mindset regarding South Korea and Manchuria.
Japan still vows slavery for any human being who acknowledges its World sovernty.
Where does it say South Korea? Maybe it was the way the faces were drawn or the uniforms, or maybe the Simpsons are animated using labour in South Korea (not something i'm aware of) or some other clue that I missed but it just looked like a generic Asian sweatshop to me. Having kicked up a fuss, the whole world is going to know it was South Korea now, even if that wasn't the intent.
WE genuinely have no idea what goes on in North Korea and can only rely on little bits of information. Even the Chinese mother of a friend of mine that originally came from the place and lived on the other side of the river from North Korea didn't know much more than rumour and a few stories from refugees after it became impossible to contact relatives and unsafe to travel back. The refugees don't seem to know a lot beyond what happens in their own towns - information and movement is tightly controlled and they are flooded with disinformation. North Korea used to export food to China but now survival of many seems to have been dependant on food aid for many years now.
While the older generations know that Kim is not a God the penalties for saying so appear to be severe, so it looks like we've got a couple of generations of highly xenophobic worshippers of Kim the God King that blame all problems on the USA, Japan etc.
So to sum up we don't really know either so even the above is thrown together from what journalists tried to find out on escorted visits or from refugees that only got to see a small portion of the picture (which is very scary on it's own - not being permitted to talk to relatives in other parts of the country etc.). We can only guess at what is inside from what effects it has on the outside, so we know something horrible is within but we really don't know how bad.
Without knowing much of the detail provided here, I would have assumed the depiction was China. But the general impression I get is that much of Asia's mass-labor forces are more or less like this... well not exactly like this, but the impression is about the same when compared to any remaining mass-labor forces in the U.S. I happen to work for a Japanese company at present and I have to say, they are a LOT less fun. In fact, my boss is Korean and he seems to feel very strongly against the notion of "convenience" when working as he has said quite specifically that the company is not here for our convenience, that we are here for the company's convenience. That philosophy speaks volumes to me.
My company is most certainly "less fun" because of the asian notion of what a workplace should be like. And yes, "overtime" is expected and nearly everyone is exempt.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
It seems to me that Matt Groening was trying to tell us that the Simpsons and other Fox products are produced using slave labour and that we should therefore stop watching all such products since the existence of those products depend on other human beings suffering. I'm with ya Matt! No more 20th Century Fox products for me!!!
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
So who animated the edgy Simpsons intro?
The really nice ones in Seoul are usually in excellent locations, with easy access to shopping, restaurants and major streets or transit hubs.
In terms of the apartment complexes, usually the immediate area around the buildings are sculpted and manicured, with play areas for children, badminton/tennis courts, community centres, that kind of thing.
Then the apartments themselves are usually well-appointed, with hardwood or occasionally stone tile flooring. The higher end apartments are usually quite spacious, and of course, since they're higher end, they usually have a river view or at least a panoramic view of the city.
I don't know what is so-wrong about Sweatshops. These people would be jobless and homeless if it wasn't for their mass-making inexpensive furniture and clothing. By far and wide, they are even the only people actually making anything affordable in America that has domestic cloth fiber or cellulose pulp. I realy don't see why it's bad that people actually hide from State Tax-collectors and ICE and Customs enforcement just so they can make a living in a Sweatshop and make it all in America, rather than ship it overseas for real slave-labor to prevail.
Or I'm just living the American dream, or trying to at-least, because I imagine all these Sweatshop operators are secrectly collecting welfare and HUD while slipping away down a side-street where they continue TRYING to compete against the communist labor they ran-away from. Blame the government and the fraudulent SUPPLY VS DEMAND freekonomy where monopolists control the consumption and perception of availability in-order to rig the Free Market(tm) from ever fixing itself.
the hillside i live on with a single 3G enabled tower near it has better coverage than most of the world. cities. countries.
and a remote mountain? that's actually a very specific mountain, out of the many 'remote mountains' in the world.
and let me tell you, the night life is teh SUCK
trolled!
you were trolling, riiiiiight?
- I'd prefer not to.
A lot of that depends on how one invests money. The difference between my wage here and what I made in the "big city" isn't actually that difference. It essentially comes out to one of two scenarios:
a) Assuming I put down the same percentage of income, I could have a house paid off here a lot quicker than in Toronto if I bought something comparable in terms of size etc
b) Within the same time-frame, I could have a place in Toronto that was a lot smaller than here, but comparable in price. Probably a condo-apartment on the edge of the city
When accounting for the cost of car insurance and many other things, I'm making less but taking home *more* than if I lived in the big city. Big mortgages also mean big interest too, so the only one getting rich in the long-run would've been the bank.
Now back in my hometown I did see situations where a lot of people from the more pricey cities were coming in and buying up real-estate. The end result is that local prices went up astronomically, so actually those who had bought a $200,000 house ended up with one worth over $500,000... but that only really help if you've moved to somewhere that hasn't gone up so much.
And their wealth distribution amongst the top and bottom 10% is better than the US with fewer people below the poverty line.
http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Asia-and-the-Pacific/Korea-South-POVERTY-AND-WEALTH.html
http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Americas/United-States-INCOME.html
I know Banksy is from the UK but the Simpsons are a US show created by US citizens.
Besides I assumed it was a dig at Fox more than a dig at South Korea or China.
Um, The Simpson's is a comedy Cartoon show, they do tend to poke fun at various things all the time. You don't hear the comic fan boys bitching.
The only reason they are bitching is probably because it hits close to home, and that's not The Simpson's producers fault, that's there own fault.
But of cry babies with barely any talent if you ask me. Swear to god all the anime from korea looks the same, at least jap's artist tend to make different looking anime.
Be seeing you...
Some poor person in North Korea is doing work on the SIMPSONS? That is crazy.
I swear to Yog-Sothoth, when I read, I saw this:
The satire, Akom founder and president Nelson Shin argued, gave the impression that Asian artists slave away in subpar sweatshops when they actually animate much of The Simpsons every week in high-tech sweatshops in downtown Seoul.
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
Koreas probably won't reunite soon in reality, but their maps show only one country.
If you look at maps of Korea (from 6:30, it's in japanese but you can still see the maps) either made by the South or the North, there is no division between the two countries.
From what I understand, they still think of themselves as one people.
piss of with your fucking region-only HULU !
Some argue that the Banksy sequence's gray and forlorn atmosphere more accurately depicts the sweatshop-like conditions in _________.
Coming soon to a country near you, thanks to Austerity (tm).
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
It's always fun making money making fun of people...until it's you. The all of a sudden it's not fair, or funny.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on