MASH’s Most Inaccurate Korean War Detail? From Screen RANT -

This just in! TV’s MASH was not always accurate! Did you know that the Korean war did not last 11 years? Sarcasm aside, there is something about corporate owned entertainment sites that bugs me. It’s not that they say things I disagree with, it’s that I can’t understand what the heck they are trying to say half the time. This article, MASH’s Most Inaccurate Korean War Detail Makes It Difficult To Watch Now Because Of 1 TV Trend from Screen Rant not only has an annoyingly overlong title, it’s not clear what point it’s trying to make at all. The central premise seems to be that the author has uncovered something that makes MASH “unwatchable.” Guess what it is? The Koreans in MASH don’t speak accurate Korean. This has something to do with “K-Dramas.”

Actors Soon Tek-Oh and Richard Lee-Sung, who played multiple Korean characters on MASH. — Soon Tek-Oh, a recurring Korean-American actor on MASH and Richard Lee-Sung, an American of Chinese-Mexican decent. Both played many Korean characters.

I don’t know what a K-drama is, and I’ll bet you one hundred bucks that most MASH fans don’t know either. But, according to this rant, the rising trend of K-dramas makes MASH unwatchable because of the inaccurate use of Hangeul (which is technically the written alphabet, whereas the spoken language is Hangungmal).

I wonder why such a thing would happen? Could it be because 99% of the Asian actors on MASH were Chinese or Japanese? Could it be that many of them were from Amercia and some didn’t even speak Chinese or Japanese in real life? There weren’t many Korean actors walking around California in those days or coming in to audition for guest roles. I’ve already wrote about the four Korean actors on MASH that we can be sure of.

Now, it’s a shame when any show can’t, or fails to, employ actors of the correct ethnicity as portrayed in the plot. However, it’s a bit much to expect a bunch of TV writers in California (and a fine bunch of writers it was) to accurately write Korean dialogue, and then to expect a bunch of Chinese and Japanese actors to speak it. This virtue signalling by the author displays an ironic racist attitude. Next you’ll expect everyone in China to speak perfect Mandarin. I quote:

This wasn’t an issue when the show premiered in the ’70s. However, it has now become one of the harsh realities of rewatching MASH, and it’s mainly because of Korean dramas’ rise in popularity. Netflix currently leads the endeavor to bring Korean entertainment to a global audience, and while many of the shows are dubbed, they can also be consumed with the original Hangeul accompanied by subtitles. Anyone who watches a 16-episode K-drama like Crash Landing on You or Queen of Tears with the latter set-up would find it off-putting listening to the supposed Koreans in MASH speaking Hangeul.

Harsh reality of watching MASH? For whom? Who is experiencing this harsh reality? I’m not able to parse this into English. Maybe it was translated from Chinese to Hangeul. Or, maybe it’s from an unearthed ancient tablet buried hundreds of years ago by Greek-speaking time-traveling aliens. Is he saying that if you watch one of these Korean dramas, you’ll be an expert on the Korean language and then find the small amount of Korean spoken on MASH off-putting? Or is the Korean speaking on the K-dramas also inaccurate? This is not an attempt to accurately critique a TV show, it’s an attempt by the author to frame themselves as more morally enlightened than the average MASH fan, by “virtue” of having watched a Korean “K-Drama.”

I guess I don’t get the patter and flash of entertainment copy. While the Korean people themselves have every right to be upset by MASH’s portrayal of them, the average American has no right to pretend sympathy with Koreans because they watch some Korean television programs. This performative activism is pretentious, if not arrogant, for an American to think they can speak for Koreans or understand the perspective of Koreans because they watch a fictional television show. They certainly should not consider themselves experts on the language.

🎭 The Irony of “Accurate” Casting

The Screen Rant article complains that MASH used Chinese and Japanese actors to play Koreans. However, by demanding that these actors should have spoken perfect Korean, the author falls lapses into performative activism rather than cultural or historical analysis.

To expect a Japanese-American actor in 1975 to instinctively know Hangungmal (spoken Korean) simply because of their “Asian-ness” is, ironically, far more reductive than the show’s original casting choices. It ignores the unique cultural and linguistic identities of the actors themselves.

🔗 Related: The Four Korean Actors We Know Were on M*A*S*H

Only Koreans Get to Complain About the Korean On MASH

I can confidently say that nobody cares whether the Korean language is spoken correctly on MASH, unless they are Korean. It’s a fiction show. Most English-speaking shows that feature other languages tend to get those languages wrong. Anybody who watched a Korean show on Netflix (I’ll admit I have no idea what the author is talking about), and then expects MASH to have perfect Korean in it and thus finds it unwatchable, well, they aren’t exactly the MASH fanbase, are they? If one wishes to be a white night, there are better ways to do it than watching television shows and declaring your instant expertise on the Korean culture.

The article also brings up the Korean clothing worn by Korean characters, claiming it was inaccurate. This largely incorrect criticism is often brought up, including by Korean-Americans, who are themselves misled by political efforts to tamp down on the true agrarian history of Korea.

The silliest complaint, however, is the one I opened with. MASH ran for 11 years. The Korean War only lasted three years. On the show, we see the characters endure many harsh winters and some very hot summers. In reality, any American personnel serving in Korea during the war would have experienced only one winter, or two at most.

I’ll simply repeat: MASH was a fictional show. In some ways, the war it portrayed was fictionalized as well. While MASH was set in the Korean War, the first military theater to feature MASH units, the show itself was about war in general. Some say, probably accurately, that it was as much about the Vietnam War as it was about Korea. Regardless, the MASH TV show was not a documentary. It was a half-hour television program. It never claimed to accurately portray the length of the Korean War.

When Christmas was coming around in the States, it was also Christmas time for the MASH characters at the 4077th, just like any other prime-time show. And, yes, this happened ten times! The original book, written by Richard Hooker, was absolutely about the Korean War, reflecting the real experiences of the author, albeit heavily influenced by rewrites aimed at selling the book.

While the MASH creators did strive to be as historically accurate as they could, this was not done at the expense of, in essence, destroying the show. If the show had been truly historically accurate, for example, none of the doctors would have been stationed at the 4077th for such a long time. While the timeline depicted in the show is unclear, for us, Hawkeye served at the 4077 for ten years. In reality, doctors were rotated out after one year or less.