InAe Lee

WRT 205

The first assignment in WRT 205, which was writing the Huffington Post Blog Article, was the assignment that gave me some confidence in writing. I think there was some luck for me that my major is public health and the topic was about the food safety. In my other public health classes, the major topic during this time was food safety and nutrition, so the first assignment drew my attention. However, I have never written a blog or an article, so I had to look at some blog articles and compare what differences they have with essays for classes. I personally was not a fan or writing a research paper since high school, because it requires lots of time and resources. Especially, researching on a topic that I do not have any interest on was a painful experience. However, just having a fun and personally important topic to research about was a great start for me. Also, the workshop for writing a strong ‘lead’ helped me writing a strong claim for the article. “Would you still be able to buy the product, if the company includes the image of cows being fed with parts of downer cows and thousands of chickens packed over their manures on their advertisement?” The most challenging part of researching was to find the right sources that will help me in giving information and evidence. By inviting the guest speaker, it was great to know other databases other than Google to find the sources. I found LexisNexis and Scopus pretty helpful, in terms of how organized their websites were and easier to find the sources with decent information.

Practicing how to do a good research and write a good research paper would not much affect on my career, but in terms of remaining school year and other courses, I think it would be a great skill to use. We did many workshops as a class over the semester and the most helpful workshop for me was how to write a good ‘lead’ and Evaluating Sources. As I said before, in researching, finding the appropriate sources was the most challenging part. After talking doing the Evaluating Sources workshop in class, I learned how to choose helpful sources by finding the writer’s project, Kairos, Logos, Ethos and Pathos. Just looking for those could give me if the source has enough evidence for me to use or not. Using this skill will help me a lot in the future writing and also save me up some time.

Researching on Food Politics and Political Controversies has increased my interest and understanding. Food Politic was a pretty familiar topic due to other class. However, I only watched the clip ‘Food, Inc.’ in other class but not researching and get deeper information about Food Politics. Because food is the most important requirement to stay healthy and happy, when I realized there are some dark secrets in the food industries, I was not happy. I know that my argument will not do much change to our food system, but just researching and writing about the truth made me feel like I did something. On the other hand, political controversies started out as a pretty boring topic for me, because I do not know much about politic. However, the topic I chose matter much to me since it is pretty serious in South Korea and I actually wanted to know more about North Korea by researching. This topic also made me engage a lot but more seriously than the Food Politics.

If I continue one of the topics, I would continue with the North Korea, because it is on going and most relatable topic for me. Whether they are threat or not, whether or not we are divided or united, North Korea would be the biggest concern in South Korea. Also, while I was researching I learned more information that I did not hear or read from the news.

I would like to share the UNIT II with someone outside the class, because the five minutes TED Talk is a great way to share information in a short time with key arguments. Since, I chose the topic, North Korea to hope that people in US could also learn some information about them that they did not know and possibly have some more attention, telling someone about my neighboring country will mean something to me.

 

Is North Korea a Threat to the World?

By. Inae Lee

Recently, the UN has voted to toughen the sanctions towards North Korea, who has been testing nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles. This issue may not be the most ‘hot issue’ for people from other countries, but as a South Korean, it was a pretty important news.

Although, North Korea is the neighboring country and used to be the same nation, South Korea is being threatened and attacked by North Korea. Soldiers who stands near the peninsula always have to be in between tensions, because there have been frequent attacks including shooting a missile on to a near island or attacking the military base and one of threats almost led into a war.

Because US is too far for North Korea to attack or may be was not an easy target for them, US has not experienced any physical attack such as missile or a bomb from North Korea, yet, they have threatened US many times with words.

Threatening other countries could be just seen as them trying to do their ‘communist’ thing, but since few years ago, their threat does not seem as simple as it was before.

When South Korea and US thought North Korea’s claim in owning and developing a nuclear bomb was a ‘bluffing’, witnessing their practice in nuclear bombing has alarmed us. Also, the fact that “North Korea, which had always referred to its nuclear weapons as a deterrent, has increasingly talked about a preemptive strike” is one of the reasons why US and other countries have to take their threat seriously.

Considering the numbers of North Korea’s threats are increasing and  getting more aggressive, it is becoming beyond the problem just between the North and South Korea. I should start by telling how and why North Korea has become every country’s problem.

North Korea has created after the Korean War ‘ended’ in 1953. The Korean War was a fight between the communist and the democrat. The communist, China and Russia had the Northern part of Korea and the democrat; US had the Southern part of Korea. While the war has been going on for three years and when it still did not seem to end, they decided to pause the war by dividing the Korea into two, north and south. While right after the division, North was more developed than the South, but when south started to grow rapidly and won over North Korea’s economy so easily, north felt threatened. This is when North started in trying to prove their power by using violence and threats. Their action seems like a child of a family who tries to get mom’s attention by getting into troubles.

Despite of North Korea’s negative behaviors, because South wants to reach out hands to North for a union, South have provided them grains, money and other resources. However, instead of giving out the resources to their citizens, the government has sold them and used the money to invest on their nuclear project and producing other weapons.

The big question many people are most interest in is “Is North Korea really a threat to us (the world)?” The possible answer is they could become one if we do not take them seriously. Even though they seem isolated from the world and not that strong, they have been trying their best to develop on their military. The government does not spend their money on their people, which they should considering in their enormous gap between the rich and the poor. Instead, they used their money on investing their weapons.

With their effort, they actually have made some powerful weapons including nuclear weapons and missiles. As a result, North Korea’s military has become “the fifth-largest military in the world, trailing only China, the US, Russia and India. It is well trained, disciplined and motivated.” This is a very surprising and unusual statistic that could come from a country with just 1% of GDP growth rate.

People say they would not use those weapons easily, because it is also suicidal for them. The spokesman, George Little has added “North Korea will achieve nothing by threats or provocations which will only further isolate North Korea.” However, looking back at their unpredictable actions, we cannot just sit and watch them making more weapons.

In order to get an idea of how much aggressive their threats are becoming, we have to compare threats they have done so far.

• April 15, 1969: North Korea downs a U.S. Navy EC-121 spy plane, killing 31 Americans
• October 9, 1983: North Korean agents try to assassinate South Korean President.
• January 2002: President Bush includes North Korea in the “axis of evil” in his State of the Union address.
• October 2002: North Korea admits it has carried out a secret nuclear weapons development program.

In the early 20’s, US only had to get involved with North Korea in protecting South Korea from all the threats. However, in the late 20’s, when the Kim Jong-un has became the new leader, after his father’s death, was when the actual troubles began.(https://www.rt.com/news/north-korea-threats-timeline-108/)

• December 2011: Kim Jong-il died and his son Kim Jong-un was named his successor.
• August 2012: North Korea announced to had developed ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US mainland.
• February 2013: They conducted its third nuclear test and threated to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against South Korea and the US.
• December 2014: North Korea lambasts US over ‘The Interview’, says Obama is the ‘culprit’.
• March 2016: North Korea launches an undersea missile after the harshest sanction from the UN

As seem from the timeline, the level of aggressiveness and the number of threats have dramatically increased since last few years. Also, their method of threats has broadened its spectrum by hacking into other’s system, such as SONY entertainment due to the movie “The interview” . This is why the sanctions on North Korea is getting harsher.

The first sanction started in 2006, to prohibit North Korea from “conducting future nuclear tests or launching a ballistic missile”. UNSCR banned a range of imports and exports to North Korean. Next sanctions became harsher such as completely banning all imports and exports of weapons, new financial sanctions targeted blocking the access of the Kim regime to bulk cash transfers. Then, the harshest sanction has declared in 2016, which included the financial sanctions, freezing economic resources located outside North Korea owned.

The reason why sanctions on North Korea is getting harsher is because sanction did not seem to work on stopping North Korea from practicing nuclear tests and launching missiles to other countries. Now, declaring sanctions on North Korea even started to  seem pointless after seeing how ignorant they are about the sanctions and doing whatever they please.

For the most recent example, North Korea has launched an under-sea missile right after UN has declared the harshest sanction on them. Taking away North Korea’s advantage every time they have done a threatening action does not seem like the most effective way to stop them. I think the most problem about the way UN declares its sanction is the absence of North Korea at the UN sanction conference. Instead of just making more restrictions and report them to North Korea, make the representative of North Korea to be present at the UN sanction conference and make sure they understand them and the consequences.

Since the North Korea is getting stronger and their threat will get more aggressive along the way, not only US and South Korea, but also UN, meaning other countries, has to take some more time on how to solve the relationship between North Korea and the world. Enforcing and limiting advantages of North Korea might not be the greatest way to stop them but it will only make North Korea feel more threatened and anxious.

I hope other countries other than US and South Korea will give more attention in finding a solution to stop North Korea’s threatening actions, because as I have said before, the problem is becoming a global problem. The experts say if North Korea’s threat become a disastrous result, it will be the second Korean War. Considering how powerful the weapons have become since the last Korean War, this would bring the catastrophe to the world, if we do not solve the problem peacefully anytime soon.

 

 

Reference:

• https://www.rt.com/news/north-korea-threats-timeline-108/
• https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/UN-Security-Council-Resolutions-on-North-Korea
• Snow, Wayne. “North Korea: Armed and dangerous”, The Atlanta Journal-Constition ; pg.4E. July 27.2003
• “China and the US can and should do more on N Korea”, Gulf Times, February 3, 2013.
• Ryall, Julian; Moore,Malcolm. “US ‘ready’ after North Korea threats increase”. The Daily Telegraph, Edition 1, National Edition, March 27,2013.
• Sengupta,Somini; Choe Sang-hun. “UN Toughens Sanctions on North Korea in Response to Its Nuclear Program” The New York Times, March 2, 2016
• http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/03/world/asia/north-korea-un-sanctions.html
• Field, Anna. “North Korea’s making a lot of threats these days. How worried should we be?” The Washington Post, March 11, 2016
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/03/11/north-koreas-making-a-lot-of-threats-these-days-how-worried-should-we-be/

 

Visual Reference:

• http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/15/asia/north-korea-nuclear-program/
• https://www.politicalcartoons.com/cartoon/46202702-cf54-4927-bcb2-666b0b4cb698.html
• https://www.cartoonstock.com/cartoonview.asp?catref=rmgn232

Reflection:

1. I think my title was short and powerful enough to draw reader’s attention. It includes the key point of the magazine article and also enough curiosity to the readers
2. I started by talking about the latest issue related to my topic and relate it to my personal background. People who did not know about the news would be drawn by the introductory paragraph and wonder what the issue is.
3.  I have pertained my tone of warning and seriousness throughout the article by talking about what different threats North Korea have done and how aggressive they have gotten as the time passed by showing the timeline.
4. By keeping the tone of seriousness throughout the article could give reader a clarity of my idea. I am not sure if my article has a uniqueness of presentation except I used the timeline to give easier way for the reader to understand my point.
5. I tried to avoid the vagueness by putting statistical evidence and timely evidence. However, because of the characteristic of my topic ; politic and history, it could seem cliche. I tried to develop my article by starting out with the recent event, then go deeper by stating the actual issue with evidences and end it with my personal opinion and perspective about the issue.
6. The persuasive stance was made by using many sources and showing the historic evidence. I also stated what the UN has been doing about the North Korea such as sanctions and suggested what kind of development could be made. I argued that some more improvement about dealing with North Korea could be made within UN, other than just making sanctions.
7. I used 9 references which includes 3 primary research, 6 secondary sources. Also, there are 3 visual references.
8. I used the sources to make the issue sound more significant by giving the actual statistical evidences and historical evidences.
9. I tried to persuade the readers by showing how weak North Korea was before, and how much they have developed. They are not just a small, powerless country anymore, but stronger than you think. They are not the greatest threat to worry about, but considering their unexpected actions in the past, they could be the one that stabs you in your back.
10. I selected 2 political cartoons for my visuals, which shows the sarcasm and criticism. Other visual includes the quote that North Korea has said towards US. I specifically used this photo to highlight the seriousness and support my evidence.
11. The class workshop about developing my claim has helped a lot to organize my thoughts and find the most strong claim I could think about. Looking at my peers comment about the claim and what else I could include in my article to develop has helped a lot and I actually edited my draft based on those.
12. I have put hyperlinks on the visuals and for the timeline
13. I tried my best to use the right grammar and use bigger words to intensify the article’s idea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unbreakable chain between food safety and desire in money

Would you still be able to buy the product, if the company includes the image of cows being fed with parts of downer cows and thousands of chickens packed over their manures on their advertisement? While the dirty truth should be revealed to the customers, yet producers are busy hiding it. In fact, it turns out that this is not the only secret they have.

As the society changed from domestic to industrial, farming is no longer universal and people do not have enough time to grow their own food or even cook a homemade meal. Therefore, consuming food that is produced by the food industries has become a matter of course and it has been decades since shopping at the grocery stores and eating at the restaurant became part of our lives. Because this has become such a natural thing, “Most of us do not worry much about the possibility that foods in our supermarkets might be contaminated and dangerous, and we act on the basis of what Nicolas Fox calls the “unspoken contract” among food producers, government regulators, and the public to ensure that food is safe”(Nestle, pg. 29). Since, people no longer farm to consume for themselves, all the food we get from the stores and the restaurants goes through lots of process, organizations and people. However, people did not start to put questions about where the food is coming from and how they are produced, until the food bourn diseases and food outbreaks have become an issue and reported through the media. As people started to have some interest in the origin of the food, they started to face the ugly truth. However, when they started to see the part of the truth, it was too late and too many people were already getting sick from the food such as food poisoning. In order to stop the problem, USDA and FDA started to set up the food policy and the rules for the food safety. While some people thought the food safety has been improved by having those rules, which was not the actual problem to solve in the first place, it just worked on easing people’s mind instead of solving the actual problem. If the policies for the food safety do not entirely make our food system safe, then who is it made for? Consumers? The Government? And also, why won’t USDA and FDA try to improve and change it?

      In the film ‘Food Inc.’, while we always had the image that the meat we consume are coming from the animals which have been raised healthily on the green field, that is not entirely true as one of the chicken farmers interviewed in the film, “not farming, a mass production”. The mass production itself shows how the food industry cares more about their profit than the safety of the food. The animals are raised in a very nasty environment and fed with corns instead of what they are supposed to be fed like the grass or other nutritious crops. The reason they are fed with the corn is because it is known for its cheapness and a great way to make them fat easily. In the reading ‘You Are What They Eat’, told us more about the problem in the animal feed. Since early 21^st century, people started to get food bourn diseases from the meat, and they found that cows those have been fed with body parts of downer cows were the cause of the disease.

As much as we care about what we eat, people should also care about what the animals are getting fed with. Like the name of the article, “You Are What They Eat.” We will eventually consume whatever the animals ate. Animals are also living creatures like humans, which means, if we can get sick from eating the wrong food, they also can. Farmers should realize that their job does not stop at selling their products to the big food industries but it continues until the food gets to consumers.

In the article ‘Organic Illusions’, Hurst talks about the truth in organic production. Since people started to have more interest in how to eat healthy, the organic market has grown quickly. Organic farming gave people a positive impression by advertising how it is good for the environment and for humans. However, its popularity did not last long because “organic foods often cost twice what conventionally grown foods do, the quantity of organic sales constitutes considerably less than 4 percent of the total market”. Organic products have more procedures and restrictions than the conventional products. However, it turns out despite of following the organic procedures, it could be not entirely organic, because “it’s possible that conventional pesticides are present-either from drift from neighboring conventionally farmed fields, or because the producer has been less than honest in his certification”.

Although organic products are harder to grow and has more restrictions, because it is more expensive than conventional products, it has become popular among farmers. However, growing perfectly organic crops needs more care and money than conventional crops. This has tempted some farmers to not to follow some of organic procedure and lie about it. This is a good example of how FDA’s food policy cannot be the only solution in keeping our food system safe. Producers should be more aware of how significant their job is and put their honesty before their profit. As Antonio put it as “ Food safety plans must be developed by a “qualified individuals”…. The qualified individual is responsible for applying the food safety plan.” When producers become more aware of the true goal of their job, a need in improving the food safety plan by FDA will not be much required.

As watching and reading those articles and a film, it seems there is nothing to trust about the way our food gets produced. There are so many problems that the consumers have not been aware of. Unfortunately, unhealthily produced food is not the biggest problem we have. The biggest problem is the way the government, producers and farmers are acting towards their mistakes. In order to find the origin of the problem in the food safety, we have to look into how they have acted. For example, when the mad cow disease happened from feeding some parts of downer cows to other cows, FDA has put the rule about banning downer cows and animal parts known to be infectious prions from human food and also banning in feeding of mammalian blood and blood products to animals. While it seems FDA has acted immediately about the problem, on the other side of the argument tells us “The FDA should have taken immediate action on the promises it made. In what appears to be a guise of considering a bigger step, they did nothing”.

When there has been an outbreak on food, the first organization that can make a big action is the FDA. However, it is ironic that “within FDA itself, the regulation of microbial hazards in food seems less important than dealing with drugs or medical devices” (Nestle, pg. 60), especially when those antibiotics have created another kind of food born illness. Their job is to help the food industry to produce a safe and healthy food by strengthening or changing the food safety policy for consumers. By FDA not taking action immediately, “even with the best of intentions, it would be difficult to keep up with food safety problems given the changes in the U.S. food system since 1906”(Nestle, pg. 59) has happened and this is just the start of the consequences from their action. FDA is not the only group that is avoiding taking the full action towards the truth in the food industry. In the matter of fact, the most responsible group, the producers are also busy blaming the FDA and farmers. As we could see in the film ‘Food Inc.’, the big food companies rejected to be interviewed about how they produce their products and what they do when there has been a problem. This rhetorically shows the audience how they are lying and masked towards what is actually happening in their companies. The main cause how these groups have been acting is because “food safety politics involves diverse stakeholders with highly divergent goals” (Nestle, pg. 60). Every group who are responsible of the problem in the food safety are busy blaming each other when they all have to get together in order to solve the problem.

Recently, FDA has decided to “prevent hazards in the food supply chain instead of a reactionary system based largely on enforcement and punishment.” This new system will allow food companies flexibility “to develop food safety plans tailored to the risks associated with their own products and operations.” I am sure the FDA has discussed about the problem and for a long time and has came up with this new system, but I am afraid that this system will only give the producers more advantage in “messing” with our food instead of become more honest. We, as consumers, should see how effective the new system would be and stay interested in on what we eat and where it is coming from.

Sources:

http://www.naturalproductsinsider.com/articles/2016/02/prevention-instead-of-correction-fda-implements-n.aspx

Robert Kenner, ‘Food Inc.’

The Consumer Reports, “You Are What They Eat”

Blake Hurst, “Organic  Illusions”

Reflection Questions

1. Writer’s project is the question of intent. It shows the purpose of the text and show its main idea. My “project” was to tell readers that how having a careful attention in what they are eating is very important by supporting the idea with sources that shows the dirty truth behind our food system because of the temptation in  power and money.

2. I only had a general idea of my project but I needed help to shrink the general idea into a specific claim and the workshop helped me in organizing my argument in the text and show the strong claim. Also, by writing down the main argument of each sources that I will use, helped me sorting out which quote and ideas I will highlight about the source and how to use the source in supporting my idea. By visualizing main argument and quotes of each sources, it was so much easier to think how I will relate them together.

3. Synthesis has to summarize the combination of ideas by pointing out the main point of each ideas and by highlighting the key words and quotes. By writing a good synthesis, it will draw better attention from the readers  with relatively short paragraph of key ideas instead of bored them with long, dragging paragraph. It will also help readers in better understanding the text. In third and fifth paragraph in my text, I tried to do a good job in synthesizing the sources I used by telling the readers the main idea of each source and key quotes.

4. Working on the Unit 1 project, I learned how to write a blog post which I never have done before. I could see how blog should be brief but still be able to show writer’s main argument by backing up with sources. Using sources appropriately will not only draw reader’s attention, but also give readers credibility about the text.

5. Honestly, I had a hard time in finding how to relate the food safety with power at the first time. Then, the first primary argument I came up with was to argue that “consumers have right to know what is going on in our food system.” In order to relate this to power, I thought the ignorance of FDA towards the food safety policy will support my argument well. So, I found quotes such as “within FDA itself, the regulation of microbial hazards in food seems less important than dealing with drugs or medical devices” (Nestle, pg. 60)” As I looked at the source to find more quotes, it got me further thinking that it is not only FDA who is being ignorant but also the producers and they could be the one who can actually make a bigger difference in our food system than FDA. The quote “food safety politics involves diverse stakeholders with highly divergent goals” (Nestle, pg. 60), got me thinking that the “stakeholders” are more like producers than the FDA. However, this does not mean that FDA did well in improving or changing the food policy.

6. At first, in order to draw the reader’s attention in the beginning, I tried to write a good lede. My idea of drawing their attention was trying to motivate readers to relate my text into their daily lives which will make them want to read further because there could be an important information that they don’t want to miss about. Therefore, I wanted them to picture the image of extreme case such as “the image of cows being fed with parts of downer cows and thousands of chickens packed over their manures”. Then, I talked about the main ideas in each sources to give readers the sense of what food safety is and what the issue is. While the beginning of the text was more informational by saying “The mass production itself shows how the food industry cares more about their profit than the safety of the food. The animals are raised in a very nasty environment and fed with corns instead of what they are supposed to be fed like the grass or other nutritious crops. The reason they are fed with the corn is because it is known for its cheapness and a great way to make them fat easily. ” , as the  text goes on, it gets more argumentative with supporting quotes “However, it is ironic that “within FDA itself, the regulation of microbial hazards in food seems less important than dealing with drugs or medical devices” (Nestle, pg. 60), especially when those antibiotics have created another kind of food born illness. Their job is to help the food industry to produce a safe and healthy food by strengthening or changing the food safety policy for consumers. By FDA not taking action immediately, “even with the best of intentions, it would be difficult to keep up with food safety problems given the changes in the U.S. food system since 1906”(Nestle, pg. 59) has happened and this is just the start of the consequences from their action.”

7.”As watching and reading those articles and a film, it seems there is nothing to trust about the way our food gets produced. There are so many problems that the consumers have not been aware of. Unfortunately, unhealthily produced food is not the biggest problem we have. The biggest problem is the way the government, producers and farmers are acting towards their mistakes. In order to find the origin of the problem in the food safety, we have to look into how they have acted. For example, when the mad cow disease happened from feeding some parts of downer cows to other cows, FDA has put the rule about banning downer cows and animal parts known to be infectious prions from human food and also banning in feeding of mammalian blood and blood products to animals. While it seems FDA has acted immediately about the problem, on the other side of the argument tells us “The FDA should have taken immediate action on the promises it made. In what appears to be a guise of considering a bigger step, they did nothing”.”

I did not know much about synthesizing and how to write a synthesis, until we did the workshop and looking at the examples in the class. After I learned, I tried to go back to my draft and write a synthesis paragraph after the paragraphs where I explain the readers about the main idea of the sources.

8. I did not have a lede on my first draft, then after the workshop I wrote my lede and got a positive feedback that it draws the attention well and give readers something to think about. So, I stuck with my first lede!

9. I always had a hard time in analyzing and writing research projects in high school. So, I want to improve my analytical skills in the next Unit. Also, since politic was never my first interest and do not know much about it, by working on the next Unit, I hope it will motivate me to have more interest in politics.