Kdramas and South Korean media occasionally displays Latin America. However, when they do so, Latin America-especially South America-is where criminals go to thrive. The shows and films are usually drug-related and do not paint the lives of Koreans in Latin America in a very positive light.
I mean, there was a Netflix series that was initially called "Suriname"-- as in named after the country. It was about a bunch of drug traffickers. I was horrified because that seemed very disrespectful to the country. It would be like having a television series about digital sex crimes and calling it "South Korea." Could you imagine?
Apparently, I was not the only one who found this series of events concerning.
The country of Suriname threatened to sue Netflix over how it is depicted. Apparently, neighboring country,Venezuela was concerned enough to warn Koreans living there to be on their guard because of potential responses to the film. In South Korea the show is still called "Suriname."
I recently saw that Song Joong-ki is going to star in a film called "Bogotá: City of the Lost."
How are you going to disrespect the capital of a nation by calling it a "city of the lost?" Why are South Korean film directors so obsessed with depicting Latin America as a place full of danger, crime, violence, drugs? It's giving "racism."
My guess is that all the good people in the show will have very light skin (including the Colombians) and any of the bad or questionable character will be darker skinned (including the Koreans) and have more Black or indigenous features.
Meanwhile, the truth is very different. For example, the former ambassador to Brazil, Lim Ki-mo, was often filmed singing classic Brazilian songs having the time of his life.
Although street violence is a problem in many big cities across the Americas, I am not sure that Korean media captures the joy that comes from living in places like Brazil or Colombia or Suriname. These Korean film directors really need to stop peddling in racist images of Latin America as crime-ridden places.
If not, we could see a Brazilian telenovela about Korean-descent Paulistas going to South Korea to engage in child traficking called Seoul: Where Souls Have a Price or creating Kpop idol camps where they beat and starve trainees in a show called KPOP: Coreia.
God forbid!
Just because Hollywood likes to recycle racist tropes doesn't mean Koreans have to as well.
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