Talk:South Korean illegal surveillance incident

Suggested edits

–In the 'Media reports' section, the article mentions an instance of inaccurate reporting from one of the TV programs by a media outlet, KBS. However, the incident was heavily covered by multiple media outlets as the illegal surveillance incident was a major scandal during the 2012 elections. I would suggest adding more media coverage of the incident at the time, as the coverage of only one incident in the broad title “Media reports” give the false impression that the media reports were inaccurate and heavily biased at the time.

–The article focuses heavily on the investigation of the current regime, and the discovery of the surveillance documents. However, the surveillance documents from both current and past regimes were already discovered, hence not as noteworthy. The main concern of the issue, which turned into a political corruption scandal was the timeline of those documents; whether or not most of such documents can be linked to a single regime, and the public debates on which of the two is more or less at fault. I would suggest restructuring the article so that the emphasis falls on the investigation’s impact on the subsequent elections.

–The ‘Public opinion’ section only contains a quote from one person, a conservative political activist and a political reformer, who compares the incident to the Watergate scandal of America. Since he alone does not represent public sentiment, I would use a different subheading may be used for Lee Sang-don’s quote. Alternatively, the ‘Public opinion’ subheading may refer to other Korean sources that demonstrate how the public’s opinion was divided in the polls, with debates surrounding particular governments, the police, and the perception of corruption among Korean voters.

–There are 27 citations in the article, and all the links work. However, it must be noted that only eight out of the 27 citations are relevant to the investigation itself. Four citations refer to a previous similar scandal as a background, ten citations referring to the inaccurate reporting that occurred during the investigation, and five regarding public opinion.

–Most of the sources around March and April of 2012, when the incident first emerged and the investigations just started. Some sources are from 2010, prior to the incident, leading to the investigations. The article would be stronger with an update on how the investigation ended, which led to allegations of police incompetence. The inconclusive result of the investigation is critical to understanding the surveillance incident, especially since the incident is regarded as a corruption scandal.

–The article can be further improved by including the re-opening of the investigations recently in February 2018, a result of another corruption scandal.

rayleighlee (talk) 00:08, 23 February 2018 (UTC)Rayleigh lee