usincorea, captain 4th division of the AEB

‘the japanese are the ones who started educating koreans, doubled their life expectancy, and turned a poor slave kindom into an industrialized nation. ‘

gerry bevers, supreme commander of the AEB

actually, we don’t need to ask gerry at all. usincorea is just looking for excuses to protect his commander. good boy!

‘gerry is just reacting to korean reluctance to admit collaboration, blah, blah, blah.’

usincorea, captain 4th division of the AEB

no, gerry is reacting to his rage and contempt for koreans. he sees the korea/japan issue as yet another avenue to get back at the people he despises and loves at the same time. just like p. edwards, major general 7th division of the AEB.

members of the angry expat brigade, hear me now! try, PLEASE try to have at least one good day in korea. just one. if you can’t do that, how about at least one happy moment? try to have at least one happy moment in the country you choose to live in. ok? for instance, why not eat some good korean food? maybe a spicy seafood stew with some scallion and pepper pancakes on the side. ummm, that’s sounds good to me!

“Any person, who drops by and reads Gerry?쨈s comments (without any backround knowledge about the complex Korean-Japanese or NEAsian-history) would come to the conclusion, that some objective Korean claims against the Japanese reluctance to come clean with their past (as Koreans should also do, you?쨈re right) are totally based on hypocracy,…”

This would have been a honest and academically right way to qoute and not to spin the intentional content and sense of my whole sentence. I?쨈m coming back from a party now and I?쨈m drunk like a pig, but even in my drugged condition, I can see the difference between my original qoute and your use of it, because you wanted to make your rethorical point.
Phew, I?쨈m taking SJI?쨈s advice to me really into consideration, it?쨈s a waste of time to debate, because I?쨈m getting frustrated more than ever. I?쨈m going to drink my last bottle of beer and deliriate about your reply…

This is why having your own blog is useful. One of my main complaints is that it is much easier to write brief criticism of bloggers in the comments section when those bloggers are taking more time and effort to put their opinions out in a reason-able format. It isn’t fair to those who take the time to write up those posts, but also, it makes it harder to keep track of what you (any commenting non-blogger) has to say.

I guess we need to ask Gerry whether he thinks the Japanese involvement in Korea was good for Korea or not. I believe his answer would be “no.”

Again, I could be wrong, but I think the amount of effort I’ve seen Gerry put into the topic of Korean cooperation or standard of living under the Japanese is in direct proportion to both the amount of denial of such things AND their use of the colonial period to continue a very strong anti-Japanese mentality from the top of society to the kids in school and even to use the colonial period as one of the justifications for anti-Americanism.

So…..
>The Japanese are the ones who started educating Koreans, doubled their life expectancy, and turned a poor, corrupt “slave kingdom” into an industrialized country.I need to do a better job of noting whether you or Shin is posting, because there is a difference, and I am getting who posted what confused and reacting to both the same way.

This is why having your own blog is useful. One of my main complaints is that it is much easier to write brief criticism of bloggers in the comments section when those bloggers are taking more time and effort to put their opinions out in a reason-able format. It isn’t fair to those who take the time to write up those posts, but also, it makes it harder to keep track of what you (any commenting non-blogger) has to say.

I guess we need to ask Gerry whether he thinks the Japanese involvement in Korea was good for Korea or not. I believe his answer would be “no.”

Again, I could be wrong, but I think the amount of effort I’ve seen Gerry put into the topic of Korean cooperation or standard of living under the Japanese is in direct proportion to both the amount of denial of such things AND their use of the colonial period to continue a very strong anti-Japanese mentality from the top of society to the kids in school and even to use the colonial period as one of the justifications for anti-Americanism.

So…..
>The Japanese are the ones who started educating Koreans, doubled their life expectancy, and turned a poor, corrupt “slave kingdom” into an industrialized country.

How long and when you have been in South Korea is important, but I do believe you can learn much about a nation and society from abroad, but you have to do a lot of reading about it. You can get a feel from the news media, but again, we are talking about degrees of understanding.

I believe my time teaching Korean adults has given me some insight into contemporary Korean society, but since I haven’t been in Korea for a couple of years, I do worry about losing that sense, but then again, when the news and what I pick up from other sources falls within my experience in Korean society, I don’t feel too off base.

I have also spent a fair amount of time with expats in Korea, mostly teachers, and I have seen a few “Korea haters” but I feel safe in saying you and Shin are more knee-jerk reactionariers. The fact that some people like Gerry have chosen to spend years of their adult lives in Korean society and have spent such time surrounded by that society does give them an edge on understanding what is going on there.

You mentioned Gerry’s defense of Japan during the colonization.

You have to understand this in relation to two things the common approach by Koreans to continue to live in that past by bringing it up even to the point of hurting their future. I can think of no better example of this than Roh’s recent March 1st speech and the “pro-Japanese” collaborator committee just voted in.

But, at the same time, as Korea is using the colonial era period to score points against others —- the Japanese, political parties in Korea, and often against the US stretching history far to lay blame for the colonization on the United States they take no effort to look at “the truth” of their own activity in this period.

Yes. It makes us all feel better about ourselves (Koreans and non-Korean alike) to say that ALL Koreans did nothing but suffer in the streets during the colonial rule, ALL the soldiers who served in the Japanese military colonizaing other Asian nations and killing Allied prisoners of war were “forced” to do such things against there will, or that ALL Koreans who went to Japan to work were slaves forced to do it agains their will.

However, that is just not true. We can debate about whether or not Gerry gives enough sympathy to Korea for the colonization. We can debate about what percentages of Korean society worked within the Japanese colonial system

(and I would like to point out that “working within the system” is NOT equal to being “pro-Japanese” in all or even most cases)

but anybody who has read some books on the colonial period must know that Korean society did not sit on its hands and do NOTHING to help the Japanese Empire.

Commenting on Korea’s selective memory of the past is not being anti-Korean.

Shin said he would not reply to me anymore. I am about at the point of not getting into these extended discussions anyway.

It is a waste of time to engage someone in debate when they simply take a post someone has taken the time to use to lay out a detailed opinion and do nothing but “counter it” by laying out blanket charges with no development.

That is why I asked to know who were the examples of the rabid Korea hating non-Koreans yall were talking about so I could at least get a chance to read what those people wrote.

Of course, I did not expect you or Shin would succeed in showing me a correct foundation for your blanket charges, because I have read a fair amount of the Korean blogs each day and read the comments to the blogs, and I thought the blanket charges of being Korean haters were much more intolerant than what these other people have put out.

And Shin proved my point, not to him of course, by the examples of rabid Korea haters he gave me to check out.

If you want to find regular comments that expose a strong bias against Korea as a whole….

try Dave’s ESL Cafe’s Korea Forum.

You’ll get a lot better evidence for your “bunch of Korea haters” argument to use against the bloggers who spend a fair amount of time trying to make reasoned arguments.

And I’ll close and end my part in this discussion with this…

sometimes you will find on the Korea blogs entries that are about nothing but something in the US (or Canada), and they will be just as critical (and often more critical) of their home country on this or that point than they are of Korea. George Bush gets some pretty harsh criticism on some of these Korea related blogs. Or John Kerry or this or that group will get ripped apart by some comment.

Blogging is much like the news. It focuses on the negative. For some reason, society does not publicize the positive.

You will read in every newspaper much more about who died yesterday than who was born.

The fact that expats who are making a living day to day inside Korea tend to write about the negatives is normal.

Leaping to the conclusion that they must be Korea haters who are miserable in their day to day lives is simply wrong (in most cases).

You did?쨈nt read that you were writing to an answer from Shin Jong Il SJI) and not from me Sugar Shin.
But I go d’accord with his naming of Gerry Bevers. I would further name the guys like kimchipig or zhang fei or slim. But I only judge from the comments they had left at Marmot?쨈s comment sections to numerous topics. I don?쨈t know anything biographical of these guys are bloggers, expats residing in Korea or whatsoever.

You?쨈re so curious about me. I was born in Seoul, may partents are from Chollabukdo and Chungcheonbukdo and spent my childhood in the ROK. The vast portion of my (higher? academic?) education was in Germany, where I live and work. I know that you are an long-time US resident with a Korean family in Korea, who spent a hell lot more time in one span there than me, but I can get a grasp from your comments, that you?쨈re too tolerant towards the insulting behaviour of some non-Korean commenters here in comparison to comments from guys like me or SJI. I?쨈m not an angel either, sometimes I?쨈m verbally very nasty, but I always try (I fail also on numerous occasions) to differentiate between US society, US foreign policy en gross and the personal ideological views or complaining (maybe Korea-bashing)of the expats here.

So, miguk seonsaengnim, if you can?쨈t see the Korea-hating spirit of Gerry Beevers comments, mixed up with correct facts, but biased (anti-Korean in general) conclusions about the colonial period of Imperial Japan in “Chosen”, than I?쨈m really lost. His comments was nothing but spitting into the face of 23 million Koreans of that time, because of the “unacknowledged” facts Bevers came forward with, that the Koreans in consideration of their collaboration and feudal agrarian Choson-dynasty status and backwardness, the Japanese had brought modernity and enslavement to the Korean peninsula. Controversies about Korean involvement in the occupation and the colonial collaboration taken aside, this is not a constructive way and the most hurtfull anti-Korean apologists comments from a non-Japanese I?쨈ve read. Bevers can bash nowaday Koreans, if this is his favourite hobby, but pissing knowingly on the graves of the past and late Korean victims, though aimed at Koreans of today, is disgusting. My two cents, miguk seonsaengnim.

this tells me exactly where usincorea is coming from. please show me where i wrote gerry is a ‘rabid korea hating racist’. i’ve never called anyone racist. that means usincorea made it.

blind AND a liar.

and you’re doing exactly what i thought you would do. this will be my last post directly to you.

goodbye.

Just checked out some of the Rathbone Press. I stopped at “Grokster: Don’t Even Think It.” Just like with Gerry, try again….

In reading Hitler’s My Battle, it wasn’t particularly hard to see his racism coming through.

But again, your blanket charges that “all” or even “most” of the non-Koreans in Korea who blog simply want to “destroy all things Korean” says more about your own hangups than it does either Gerry or what I have just read at Rathbone.

I have seen some ESL instructors who I would qualify as Korea haters posting at Dave’s ESL Cafe, but since you keep going after the bloggers and Gerry’s forum….

Why don’t you try countering their particular criticism rather than issuing blanket condemnations.

For example, why don’t you go into more detail about why the Rathbone Press’ item on the Korean scientist recieving praise in the US is an example of a hatred of all things Korean?

His point was that he doesn’t believe such things happen in Korea —- He asks why you don’t hear of other foreigners coming to Korea and achieving such success.

He was MAKING a point. Why don’t you counter the point with a reasoned argument of your own?

A good way would be to point out where this or that non-Korean has won scientific or other merit based awards (besides ones related to use of the Korean language).

I’ll check out the Rathbone.

I do read Korea Media Watch regularly and have read Gerry’s views.

If he is an example of the rabid Korean hating racists you speak somewhat frequently about, try again….

Saying Gerry is anti-Korean doing nothing but finding a way to rag on “everything” Korean speaks more about your own personal issues than it says about any objective Gerry has.

Also, you skipped the second question altogether.

How much time have you spent in South Korea?