PING:
TITLE: I just love linguistic foibles,
BLOG NAME: Brainysmurf
especially when it involves important people with heads about as big as some oceans. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, as reported by the Marmot, said the wrong word for hello in Korean when visiting Seoul today. Instead of saying the…

PING:
TITLE: Medium is Memory 2: Psychology of the Web
BLOG NAME: GatorLog: A blogger’s monologue
??째??쨈??째??™€??흹 ?짠??????? ?쨍째???????????짼??쨀쩌 ??쨍?째???? ?짼쩍?????? ?쨍째???????????짼??????짧??째짹??? ?째짢??쨈?째???????짚. ?쨌쨍?????짚??쨈 ?????흸??쑣??????쨈??쑣??째?째????째?짼째??쨈 ??쩌?????????쨈?짼? ?쨀??째??????흹, ??쨔????????????????흹 ??쨔?징흹?쨌쨍??? ?????쩌, ?짼흸??흹?흸???? ???…

Tabloid posting?

No…

The sad thing about Korea is that “events” like the great Rumsfeld
insult DO make some difference in Korea.

This is one of the problems with people like ourselves who have lived
in Korea for years but come from our western understanding.

Things like the way the IMF chief was sitting or the misunderstanding
of what Rumsfeld said seems trivial and not worth commenting on.

Or in Infidales case, mentioning it is yellow journalism…

but we should admit to ourselves and allow those who don’t have much
experience in Korea understand that such things are often big issues
in Korea.

Really…..who would have thought the way the IMF chief was sitting
would be THE big news item that stuck in the public’s mind for a week
when the Korean economy was crashing around our ears?!???

We don’t know yet, but the Rumsfeld insult misunderstanding could
easily have a lasting impression in mainstream Korea.

That is why it is more than a legitimate post on a blog about
Korea.

RE COMMENT: “I wasn’t here then, but believe that Bush’s March 2001 reference to Kim DJ as “this man” was also hyped into some slight to DJ.”

I would hate to say something nice about Hong Sa-deok, who Marmot mentions in a later post today, but Hong was so offended at how Bush showed disrespect for Korea’s head of state with that expression that he sent the White House an open letter about the matter, and instead it was KDJ’s Cheong Wa Dae that came to Bush’s defense, with some explanation about how “this man” should be interpreted as a Texan expression of frienship, etc.

“To sit down with these men and deal with them as with representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride one’s own dignity and to invite the disaster their treachery will inevitably bring upon us.” (Gen. Matthew Ridgway, 1951)

-In the speed skating kerfuffle, South Korea readers were told outright that Ohno won a judging decision biased to favour U.S. hosts. Whole angry editorials were built on that supposed “fact”.
-Mainstream media concocted a whole slew of “facts” about the schoolgirl’s deaths that no doubt inflamed public opinion. They also groundlessly declared one after another of the U.S. apologies as insincere.

With South Koreans as prone to overraction (and inclined to give feelings more weight than facts) as they have shown themselves to be, I think it is well worth highlighting these “trivial” issues before they blow up.

The IMF honcho was, at that time, Michel Camdessus, Managing Director of the IMF from January 1987 to February 2000. He was serving his third term.
http://www.imf.org/external/np/omd/bios/mc.htm

Well, because I didn’t have time to make my big Rummy post yet, it was the number 1 hit piece over at Yahoo! Korea News, I thought it was amusing, it’s my blog, and I figured I’ll post it.

“This is tabloid posting!”

True enough, but not every post has to be friggin’ political treatise. Besides, if it was good enough for Yonhap, it’s good enough for The Marmot’s Hole. If you think it’s a crappy post (and I’ll be the first to admit that there’s are a lot of crappy posts on this blog), feel free NOT to link to it.

Really, I’d just like to wipe all these things I know about Korea from my head! This is tabloid posting!

For two or three days, they came in talking about “the
arrogant Americans” who were pushing Korea around and
forcing horrible “concessions” to the IMF bailout.

In particular, they were enraged at the way the IMF chief
who came to visit Kim Dae Jung was SITTING at the photo
op!

They said it was a clear sign of arrogance how the man
(not an American) was sitting back on the couch with
his legs crossed, speaking to Kim as if he were the
Emperor and Kim was his servant.

While poor Kim sat on the edge of his seat stiff and
respectful.

I told my students, “Don’t you think there are some
other things to worry about and get ticked over? How
about the chaebol heads? How about the government
that saw this coming for months but couldn’t reform
the economy?”

It was tough to hear all this “IMF Emperor Sitting
Scandal” when I was watching the US dollar value of
my salary slide deeper and deeper into the crapper.
Especially since I was scheduled to go home for an
extended vacation at the end of a contract in just a few
months!!!