I'd agree that this isn't a very convincing argument. There are some obvious reasons why people would be less finicky about authenticity of fiction on NK, considering that it's pretty much a mystery to most people. On the other hand American Southern racial issues has to be one of the touchiest subjects around. I can't imagine what the response would be if a white person had wrote, say, any of Toni Morrison's books. I'm sure it would get a lot of flak. The author does hit some truth though; There was, for instance, the argument at Sundance over how a group of Asian actors should be portraying themselves in which Ebert rebutted: I feel like the attitude he's arguing against still persists, although that's not quite what the article is presenting.People of color, on the other hand, are expected to speak only for themselves.
And what I find very offensive and condescending about your statement, is nobody would say to a bunch of white filmmakers, "How could you do this to your people?" This film has the right to be about these people and Asian American characters have the right to be whoever the hell they want to be. They do not have to "represent" their people.
Interesting idea, but unconvincing argument. The author cites one example of a white guy and one example of a non-white guy. I could just as easily say that writers who write about N. Korea get away with inauthenticity while writers about the American South don't. I would be equally well supported (but maybe or maybe not as correct). I think criticizing authors for not being authentic is a pretty time honored tradition by critics, but that NK happens to be such a mysterious and obfuscated place that we permit our imaginations to run wild (perhaps we want wild-eyed imaginations to be true in that case, since it supports our view of NK as a psycholand, hell-on-earth). Anyway, perhaps the author of this piece is correct, but there is no evidence to suggest that she is in this article.
That's so, but to me it raises an interesting question. Why do critics and readers have this obsession with what is so often termed "authenticity"? Even if the work is believable, it isn't real and does not take place in the universe we live in. If an author has the chops to create a believable world for the reader to inhabit and interact with the characters the author has created, then why care how close it is to our reality?