미녀들의 수다

Surfing the Korean TV I discovered what would happen if the United Nations and a Korean Game show had a baby. The show, 녀들의 수다 (aka Minyeodeul-ui Suda), is KBS's Global Talk Show. but that name however is a bit of a misnomer. The more accurate title, translated from the Korean as The Beauties' Chatterbox, reveals that the show's true purpose: to get pretty girls from all over the world (etc & etc) to talk about Korean issues. There's even a guy version although too. God bless 'em.

The girls involve seem to enjoy being on the programme, reaping what fame they can they get out of it. But the show isn't lacking for critics:

When the show began the women on the panel were mostly old hands, Korea-wise, in particular American Leslie Benson, who's spent 11 years in Korea and speaks fluent Korean. The show was mostly people who know Korea well telling Koreans about their own country, gently pointing out some of Korea's less proud aspects, in particular, its sexism.

...

Well after plodding these well-worn boards for a long time, these topics have ceased to be interesting. Anybody out there who watches this program will notice that in an effort to maintain the interest of basically talking about in-your-face old ladies, drinking soju and eating dog meat, they have changed the format from 'knowledgeable foreigners discuss their experiences in Korea thoughtfully' to 'buckwild foreign chicks who don't know anything about Korea and can barely speak Korean say shocking, uninformed things in barely understandable Korean'

Of course it's not like North American is the bastion of intelligent programming.