Why I reread the comics Master Keaton as I send off Lee Seon-Gyun(Parasite Lead actor)

Why I reread the comics Master Keaton as I send off Lee Seon-Gyun

- SEO, CHAN-HWE(iam@seochanhwe.com) / Comics Columnist

When discussing Japanese manga from the 1980s and 1990s, it's often said that they were "deep and entertaining, based on a wide range of sources," and that they were "high-quality manga that adults could watch as well as children. One manga that fits this description is Master Keaton. The conflict between the United Kingdom and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) is the subject of the fourth and fifth episodes of the sixth volume of this comics. This episode are subtitled "The False Tricolour" and "The Union Jack of Hypocrisy," referring to the people of Northern Ireland who put their hopes in the IRA and the British who suppressed them.

An IRA fighter is killed in broad daylight on the street. "A terrorist has been killed," British media reported, as the woman, Jennifer Ochner, a piano teacher and bomb expert. She is believed to have resumed terrorist activities upon her release from prison after serving a 10-year sentence by journals.

Hughes, the Sunday Sun's the senior reporter, order to his junior reporters to publish O'Connor's most beautiful photographs rather than the bloodied ones, and he sets out on his own investigation. Assisted by his protagonist, Keaton, an insurance investigator with the British Special Forces (SAS), Hughes' investigation is fraught with difficulties and he is nearly killed by Ochner's killer, but he eventually exonerates O'Connor by revealing that what he was carrying when he died was not a bomb detonator but a device that responded to certain sounds from his cat.

Then comes the important stuff. After the scoop, Ochner's mother visits Hughes with a message from her daughter, who wants peace and wants him to "stop seeking revenge and sit down and talk". The mother only gave the scoop to Hughes because when all the papers published pictures of the mangled body, only the Sunday Sun published her daughter's pretty face.

The reason I brought up this cartoon after a long time is that the situation surrounding the recently deceased Lee Seon-gyun(lead actor in <Parasite>),  mirrors the media's treatment of Ochner. Whenever an unconfirmed or unverified accusation was made against him, most of the media would spread it without verification, and the public would uncritically gobble it up. If you are guilty, you should be punished accordingly, but what was thrown at Lee Seon-Gyun was clearly outside the law.

There was no chance to plead, no chance to make excuses, no chance to be punished if you were truly guilty. The topical issues that should have been highlighted in that moment have long since been pushed aside. What remains is the desire of those who believe that LEE Seon-gyun must have been unscrupulous anyway. As long as people are dog and pig, the black desire is ready to create the next person to throw under the bus. Our media, like Hughes on the Sunday Sun, should be able to resist its intentions, but the reality is that we have a media like the Sunday Sun's director, who wiped his hands over Hughes' face, saying, "We're not a classy first-class newspaper like the Guardian! Scandal! We need a scandal!". Even in Korea, the self-proclaimed "No. 1 newspaper" published a suicide note that the family wanted to keep private, claiming it was an exclusive report, and then deleted it after the date of the "false" controversy. media do that because the people watch and listen as media wanted. May he rest in peace.

(2024.01.07)

* <Parasite> main poster. LEE Seon-Gyun is center of upline.

(2024.01.07)