#7 - Global Reference, Main Point

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (D).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[avengingangel]

Hi! I correctly chose D as my answer, but I'd like to confirm it was for the right reasons:

I threw out A & E as losers on first-read... so was down to B, C, & D.

B - I didn't like B because of "Koreans visiting the US." The "visiting" is the wrong part, yes?
C - I didn't like C (although, I had ranked it as my top choice originally), because of "the contribution of recent immigrants from Korea..." They weren't immigrants, right? They were Koreans who traveled to the US specifically to demand settlement (as in, not move there). That's why it's wrong right?

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

I think those reasons are sufficient for eliminating those answers, Angel, although those are not the only things wrong with those answers. They key is not to look at why any given answer is wrong, but why a given answer is better than the others. This passage is about union workers and how their dispute affected others, and only D brings this up. That's why D is better and is the credited response.

[chian9010]

Dear Powerscore officer,

I have a question about D). I got rid of D right away because I think it is a dispute between Korean union workers and a Korean company (branched in USA?).

[Adam Tyson]

You may have overlooked a crucial detail in the first sentence, chian9010. Here that is again:

In April 1990 representatives of the Pico Korea Union of electronics workers in Buchon City, South Korea, traveled to the United States in order to demand just settlement of their claims from the parent company of their employer, who upon the formation of the union had shut down operations without paying the workers.

(emphasis added)

It's not a branch in the US - it's the parent company! That's why they came to the US, so they could deal directly with the parent company instead of the Korean subsidiary, and get just settlement from that US company.

[lsattesttaker93]

For AC D, I re-read that sentence a few times and it isn't clear to me that the parent company is based in the U.S.

Isn't it possible for those workers to travel to the U.S. to settle the dispute in a U.S. court / jurisdiction? Like we see that a lot in the news with Russians traveling to the U.K. to settle disputes?

[Adam Tyson]

While that might be possible, lsattesttaker93, it would be an unsupported stretch of our imagination to go there.

First, the passage says they came to the U.S. to demand just settlement from the parent company. To imagine that the parent company is actually located elsewhere, you would have to assume that the company has at least some branch or representatives in the U.S. Otherwise, who did they come to talk to about the problem?

Second, to get where you went, you have to assume that they came to bring a lawsuit, rather than just to negotiate with the company itself. The passage never said they came to file a lawsuit, did it? And then you would have to assume that there is some international court in the U.S. that would have jurisdiction over a company that is not in the U.S. There is no discussion of this being some sort of international court.

These assumptions are more work than we should be doing. The more commonsense approach (and thus the approach favored by the authors of the LSAT) is to assume that they came to the U.S. because that is where the parent company is located. They either came to talk to representatives of the parent company located there, or else they came to bring a lawsuit in a U.S. court because that court had jurisdiction of that parent company, which would typically also mean that's where the company is located.

Don't make these passages more difficult than they need to be by coming up with creative alternatives that might be true even though there is no evidence to support them. The test is difficult, for sure, but it's not trying to hide things from us like that! If they meant to indicate that the parent company was elsewhere, but they came to the U.S. because of some special jurisdictional issue or other benefit of doing so (like more favorable media coverage, perhaps), they would have let us know that. That would be too important a detail to leave out!

[mollylynch]

Why is B a bad answer?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Molly,

This passage is about the dispute between Korean union workers and the US company that employed them and how this dispute affected the Korean American community.

At the end of the first paragraph, the passage states, "From the beginning, the union cause (my emphasis) was championed by an unprecedented coalition of Korean American groups and deeply affected (my emphasis) the Korean American community on several levels" (lines 7-10). It is the cause of the union dispute that affected the community.

Answer B doesn't mentioned the union or its cause, and therefore misses the key point of the passage. B just describes contacts with Koreans visiting the United States. That could refer to any Koreans visiting the US for any reason, but the passage focuses on the union workers and their dispute. Also, the members of the Korean community didn't necessarily even have direct contact with these workers, instead they were inspired by the cause/movement.

You should definitely prephrase the answer to this question prior to looking at the answers. Ideally, your prephrase should include the union workers and their dispute and how it affected the Korean American community. This would help you zero in on Answer D and avoid being tempted by the wrong answers.