Talk:Chang Myon

Recent edits by Lcsdz
In the interests of avoiding an edit war, I want to explain why I reverted to the last edit before Lcsdz began changing the article. A few of Lcsdz's changes were beneficial, and some of his added content may even belong in the article, but it was lost among so many small, terrible changes that simply reverting to the previous state of the article seemed the best course of action. I will not enumerate every last problem with Lcsdz's changes, but here are a few examples just from the Introduction:
 * Changing 2nd Prime Minister of South Korea to The Second Prime Minister of the First Republic of Korea breaks the link to the Prime Minster of Korea page, and prevents predecessors and successors from being properly displayed. Many changes like this were made. It is possible to change the displayed text without breaking the link, but I do not see a need here.
 * As mentioned, successors &c. were deleted but I think this is an unintended consequence of breaking the above links.
 * Seoul, Korean Empire -> Jeoksun-dong Seoul, Korea (Joesun) | Again, this breaks page links, and does so in order to introduce information that is meaningless to the article's primary (English-speaking) audience. The Korea of Chang Myon's birth was known in English as the Korean Empire, therefore the original text is correct.
 * South Korea -> Korea | Blatant POV. South Korea is not Korea, and neither is North Korea.
 * politician -> statesman; parliamentary system -> parliamentary democracy; etc. numerous small word changes with no purpose other than to bias the reader in favour of Chang Myon. Democracy sounds better than system, statesman sounds better than politician, but in both cases the original text is fine as is.
 * More links being changed to advance a POV position (South Korea -> Korea), this time it's worse though because the displayed text is left alone, it's the article titles it is supposed to link to that are changed, breaking links without affecting the article body.
 * None of the other grammar changes in the Introduction are necessary. All are either biasing or make no difference. Some are simply bad. E.g. It is poor style to write "he was elected the Prime Minister...". the does not belong here. Same with "Japanese rule" -> "the Japanese rule".
 * Removed a reference from the introduction, though I believe this was simply moved elsewhere in the article.

Good changes:
 * Chang Myon's offices are not listed in chronological order, or any logical order as far as I can tell. Lcsdz fixed this but unfortunately broke too many other things in the process.
 * The April 19th Movement could be mentioned in the introduction, however, it is not really necessary as it gets mentioned later in the body of the article. It should probably be linked there, though.
 * (In Early Life) YMCA club Village School -> YMCA Village School | "club" is redundant.
 * Incheon Public Simsang elementary school -> Incheon Public Simsang Elementary School | This does appear to be the correct capitalisation.

There are also various things removed without explanation, such as mention of the Japanese surrender and its effects on Chang Myon's career.

And then we come to the parts actually added, as opposed to mostly minor (albeit often disruptive) changes. For example:


 * When Syngman Rhee was forced out of office in April 1960 because of the Rhee administration and Li Gi-poog’s misgovernment of state affairs, compounded by the exposure of egregious corruption, the Republic of Korea found itself in serious disarray. Hence, the administration led by Prime Minister Chang Myon faced volatile political and grievous socioeconomic difficulties. In the midst of such difficulties, the Chang administration did not resort to dictatorship. After all, Chang Myon fought against the Rhee dictatorship for many years. He was a true believer in democracy. Moreover, his administration had successfully designed the first five-year economic development plan that would have proven beneficial for all Koreans. And this five-year economic development plan was “borrowed” by the Park Chung-hee administration. Park used virtually the same Five-Year Economic Development Plan, originally designed and drafted by the Chang Myon administration, for his economic development after the May 16 military coup.


 * Chang Myon championed liberal and democratic values. Therefore, he was strongly opposed to communism as practiced by the former Soviet Union and fascism/Nazism as practiced by the Third Reich, Germany. Likewise, he firmly opposed totalitarianism and authoritarianism in any shape or form.


 * He believed in individualism in the context of common good. Thus, he abhorred endemic political and economic/financial corruption in the Republic of Korea. The word republic stands for res, things/affairs, and publica, public. In short, republic stands for things public, commonweal, public interest and/or common good.


 * He led a modest and frugal life. He lived in an unpretentious, little house (Seoul, Jongro-gu, Myongreun-dong, 1 Ga, 36-1) where he and his spouse spent most of their life and raised seven children. Anyone who visits the old house, now renovated, can readily see his life style. This house is now designated a National Heritage site and converted to be a museum dedicated to him. It is open to the public.


 * As a member of the National Assembly in the late 1940s, he initiated a legislation against concubinage and prostitution. It was duly passed. Throughout his life, he abstained from smoking and drinking. He had many good friends and enjoyed listening to classical music.

If that's not POV, nothing is.

The paragraph regarding the misuse of Japanese compensation for victims of colonisation is interesting, and perhaps belongs in the article with a little rewording. I would have left it in, but it was too intertwined with the rest of the changes.

Finally at the end of the article he somehow managed to delete the succession box, but this may have been unintentional.

In summary, with few exceptions, when these changes did not actively make the article worse, they amounted to nothing more than rewording already correct sentences. --Wlerin (talk) 01:52, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Cleanups
Hi, I made a bunch of edits. I also deleted a chunk of information about his ancestry; it was unsourced and only marginally relevant to who he was as a person. If someone really wants it back, they should source it and maybe add it as a footnote.toobigtokale (talk) 06:20, 20 August 2023 (UTC)