The Collegian

Issue date: 3/20/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Courtesy of www.netaid.org SuChin Pak, visited Saint Mary's last week to speak with students about her career in television and answer questions.

SuChin Pak, host of MTV news, visited Saint Mary's College on Tuesday, March 13, to speak to students. The event began with a clip from a documentary series by Pak called "My Life (Translated)." The clip set the tone for her to go on stage and talk about her personal background; life as a Korean immigrant to the United States. After her short autobiography, Pak fielded questions from the audience, and the rest of her presentation was entirely audience driven.

Pak came to the United States from Korea when she was five years old and grew up in the Bay Area. She says she grew up very self-conscious, and speaks of worrying about how she looked. "One thing that really made me feel vulnerable was the shape of my eyes," she said. "I didn't feel pretty anywhere." Pak said she felt pressured to have a particular crease in her eyelid typical of Europeans but not of Asians.

As a teenager, she would use tape and heavy eyeliner to create the illusion of the fold. Now Pak is trying to relieve some of these pressures. "If an Asian kid in Middle America gets a little less crap because a Korean chick is on MTV, then I've done much more than I set out to."

She first got a taste of television when she was a junior in high school. Far from having hooked her on TV, though, Pak said she "hated it." "It was the worst experience of my life," she said. Despite this, she did more television work in high school and hosted a PBS science show while in college at UC Berkeley. "I never thought TV would be something I could make a living at," she said.

Pak's big break came after college when she was hired to host a two hour daily live talk show on the Oxygen Channel. "That's when my career really began. It was the first time I did producing and writing and had control over my own work," she said. With some serious experience under her belt, Pak said "it was a cinch to get into MTV."

After sharing her history with the Saint Mary's audience, Pak opened the floor to questions and faced topics as mild as inquiry about her current projects, as fiery as challenges to her ability to be an honest journalist while working for the corporate giant Viacom, and as broad as what she thinks is the most pressing social issue affecting the planet. Pak gave all questions credence and offered answers she said were "100 percent honest."

Speaking about getting youth interested in the news, Pak pointed to MySpace and YouTube, and said, "You can't compete with the stupidity on the Internet." She said the best thing to do is offer the audience a credible alternative, someplace to get real information.

"As the audience gets more fragmented, choices have to be more specialized," Pak said. In response to questions, Pak also spoke about her relations with public relations managers, bias in the news, and her views about New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

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