Talk:Counterweight (novel)

The article, and the DYK hook based on it, get the facts exactly backwards.
The novel wasn't motivated by chauvinism against Koreans, as the article claims, but by chauvinism of Koreans against other nations - that is what Djuna says in the Wired interview, but the Wiki editor has apparently misunderstood the sentence and arrived at exactly the opposite meaning.

The DYK says: 'Did you know that anti-Korean sentiment, due to South Korea's economic growth, motivated Djuna to write the sci-fi novel Counterweight'?

This is based on a part of the text of the article, which says: 'Djuna's motivation behind the novel was rooted in the exploration of Korea's relationship with other neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia, particularly as the country's growth has led to the surfacing of historic prejudices against it'.

But that sentence is sourced to the interview in Wired, and in it Djuna actually says the following: 'The most important thing for me was to deeply consider the relationship between Korea and the Southeast Asian countries. Until fairly recently Korea was like an isolated island, with no wherewithal to think about other countries. But the world has changed, our neighboring countries have become closer, and Korea has become something of an “advanced nation” — which led latent prejudices regarding other (emphasis mine) Asian nations to become clearer and more violently present. I find this extremely alarming, as its mechanism is similar to the Japanese’s entrenched hate towards Koreans. These forces also serve as the constituency for Korea’s far-right government.'

In other words, Djuna claims to have been motivated not by prejudices in other Asian nations against Korea, but by prejudices in Korea against other (specifically Southeast) Asian nations. Djuna isn't worried by, say, actual Japanese xenophobes' anti-Korean sentiment, but by Korean far-right xenophobes having an attitude that resembles that of Japanese xenophobes. And indeed this makes sense: Djuna says this tendency is the result of Korea becoming an 'advanced country', and 'advanced countries' are typically not the target of prejudices - 'developing countries' are. Also, the story is apparently about a Korean corporation exploiting a poorer Asian nation - thus, it's primarily about Koreans being unfair to others, not about others being unfair to Koreans (by not letting them exploit others to their heart's content just like Westerners have done). 62.73.69.121 (talk) 21:39, 27 January 2024 (UTC)