For people who are so damn sensitive about red-baiting, apparently some members of the Uri Party aren’t above a little Jap-baiting. Two members of the Uri Party’s standing committee unleashed some very unkind words today toward newly elected GNP chairwoman Park Keun-hye, who spent much of her first day on the job moving the party’s base of operations to a friggin’ tent. You can read the English version here, but for a better look at what was said, take a look at the Korean version over at No Cut News. Anyway, Rep. Shin Gi-nam said:
It’s hard for her to escape responsibility for the 3.12 coup d’etat and her direct and indirect role in Rep. Suh Chang-won’s prison escape. It’s a historical irony that the daughter of Yushin dictator Park Chung-hee should become the chairwoman of this age’s majority party. History’s proper mission of ending the forces of old and standing for the forces of democracy has once again been chewed up.
And Rep. Lee Bu-yeong had this to say:
If you compare the tears of Rep. Kim Hee-seon, a descendant of independence activists, and the smile of Rep. Park Keun-hye, the daughter of a pro-Japanese lieutenant in Japan’s Kwantung Army, at the time when the impeachment vote passed, you see the tragedy of Korea’s modern history. The father’s coup and the daughter’s coup - you have to see through to the essential nature of it. It’s a mask of deception.
Not a day on the job, and Park’s gotta take shots like that (of course, her party did impeach the president after only a year in office, so I guess time isn’t a factor). And from people who bitch to high hell when people question their past (or current) ideological convictions.
But I guess all is fair in love and politics. God bless election time.
18 Comments
SJI, I do not Jap-bait. I have never gotten on this blog and argued “so and so is a bad person and shouldn’t be elected because he collaborated with the Japanese,” let alone, “so and so is a bad person and shouldn’t be elected because her father was a Japanese collaborator.”
I can see how she might be attacked on her family background because, well, she uses that background to her advantage. But I still don’t like how yesterday’s attack was carried out.
“Red-baiting” someone whose family got ahead by joining communist forces might be a better comparison to “Jap-baiting” Park Geun Hye.
It’s “baiting”, not “bating”, M; recommend you make the correction.
Normally I don’t “sharpshoot” spelling but in this case I thought I’d do so for the benefit of any Koreans/Asians whose English is learned, so they don’t get confused. I’m very impressed by the written English of replies here from presumably non-native English speakers. I of course have no Korean; figure we owe it to them to not be confusing as English is tough enough.
No such word as “bating”; “batting” would be what you do when you step up to the plate in baseball.
Thanks for the heads-up.
Corrections made.
Whew, venerable Mr. Marmot, I thought I was the only one with correction posts.
why would you object to this jap-baiting, mr marmot? you do it too.
Forgetting yout “seaofjapan” posts, poiboy?
Welcome to the period of pro-Jap hunting…
I thought the Chosun Daily item was a good example of exactly what I’ve been whining about.
Attacking her for her father is all fine and dandy, I guess.
If I get the time I’ll post more about this on my blog, but what made the Chosun piece ring like a clear bell in my ear was how the head of Uri Party said Park could apparently fix everything by withdrawing the impeachment.
Wonderful….
This is what happens when you get a contemporary government to look back and judge blame…
We are seeing this on a smaller scale in the US with the 9-11 guilt hearings - an idea I agree with in principle but nonetheless understand are nothing but a political show.
I think the awesome heat of the Uri Party attack just shows us Korea opened itself up for a much rougher political / pseudo-historical period of bullshit….
True to form, Shin Jong Il misunderstands the concept and definition of “baiting” and thus lobs another false accusation at the Marmot. SJI lowers the quality of debate simply by showing up.
What is truly sad about this is the inability of Korean politicians of any stripe 1) to behave with any dignity and decorum EVER and, worse, 2) to address any POLICY issues in their incessant battles.
At a time of record unemployment for youth and women, backsliding on critical economic reforms, daily evidence of China’s challenge to the ROK’s competitiveness, a human rights holocaust and nuclear sabre rattling in North Korea and a possibly significant terror threat to U.S. allies in the Iraq conflict, is dredging up the colonial period the best the Uri Party or its rivals can do?
Paul H. is wrong anyway. There *is* such a word as “bating” although it’s not used in the context of “red-baiting”. The root “-bate” means to set aside, or to hold back (e.g. abatement).
Don’t believe me? Ever hear the phrase “waiting with bated breath?” I am sure you’ve often thought it was spelled “baited” but that’s incorrect. Waiting with bated breath means standing by in breathless anticipation — waiting with one’s breath held back.
“SJI lowers the quality of debate simply by showing up.” - slim
Oho, though I don’t always agree with Mr. Shin Jong-Il’s opinions, he breathes kimchi-flavored wind into the comment section. Would you deny that fact? In my view, Mr. Marmot knows to appreciate his appearances in his comment section. BTW, I love his recipes of Korean dishes.
“Forgetting yout “seaofjapan” posts, poiboy?” - Miss Piggy
Nihil novi sub sole, asinus?
thanks, Mr Sugar Shin, for your comments. i think you know i also appreciate your comments as well. and mr marmots’, too.
mushrooms in twoenjang?
have a good day, Mr Shin.
you too, mr marmot.
btw, i think you use this korea/japan issue to belittle koreans; i don’t ever see you writing about what the japanese need to do. what’s your advice for them? i’d like to know. about the only thing you’ve ever said about them was that it’s their businees if their prime minister wants to pay homage to war criminals.
and one more thing if you so choose to answer: are you also an apologist for slavery? if the koreans got schools from the japanese, did the jews get israel from germany?
“Those who graciously correct, must themselves accept gracious correction.”
Funk & Wagnalls Dictionary, 1963.
bate (verb)
verb transitive:
1. to lessen the force or intensity of; moderate. “He watched with bated breath”. (bated, bating)
2. to deduct, decrease
verb intransitive:
3. to diminish, become reduced (variant of “abate”)
Also — (this usage is very obscure now in my opinion, though perhaps my farmer ancestors used it):
bate (noun)
–a solution of chemicals or manure containing natural or synthetic enzymes, used to soften skin or hides.
also a verb transitive:
to soften, by soaking in bate. “bated, bating”.
Mr. Shin Jong-Il,
I meant paengi beosot (?흸쩍??쨈?짼????/ paengi mushrooms)also popular known as Enokitake, winter mushrooms, snow puff mushrooms, velvet stem mushrooms, velvet shank, velvet foot, the exact Latin term is: Flammulina velutipes.
Add the fresh paengi mushrooms bundle at last or cook only a little with the twoenjang-gook/-chigae and you will get the taste of your lifetime!!!
Damn, I must ask my mother to cook a 10 liter bucket full of the twoenjang-soup, when I’m again at my parent’s home for visit. Never heard of spam (the tinned meat?) as an ingredient.
Sorry, Marmot, for misusing your place as a cooking recipes forum.
I’m not sure if it’s appropriate to compare the Holocaust and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This is not to say that the Japanese colonial period was a positive experience, regardless of whether it had positive effects or not. I think it would be very difficult for anyone to say that colonization is good for those being colonized. But let’s not compare apples and oranges — if we’re going to compare that period to anything, it must be compared to the colonial experiences of other states at the time. And to the extent that I apologize for the Japanese, it’s not because I think Korea deserved to be colonized or that Korea was better of because of its colonial experience; it’s because I think anyone rationally looking at the world system of the late 19th/early 20th century would realize very quickly that for Japan, it was very much a question of colonize or be colonized. If Korea had succeeded in its belated modernization attempts, it, too, would have joined the imperial scramble for China, because it wouldn’t have had much of a choice. Actually, Joel at Far Outliers recently had a post on this that I’m going to link shortly — you might find it an interesting “what might have been” story. And to the extent that I disagree with some of the historical rhetoric, it’s because I find that the rhetoric is just that — rhetoric. It may create a sense of pride in a younger generation that doesn’t have first hand experience of the complexities of the time, but it doesn’t get us anywhere in understanding just what happened during a period that I will be the first to admit was a very difficult time to be Korean. And BTW, I also happened to think the way American history is taught, both in schools and through popular media, is equally bullshit. We prefer to look at everything in black and white/good vs. evil, but as you know, history is much more complex than that.
And as far as my defending the right of the Japanese prime minister to pay homage to war criminals, I said so not because I think the Japanese prime minister should pay homage to such figures, but because I felt it was a domestic matter that other states really shouldn’t make a diplomatic issue of. I’ve been to Tiananmen Square, where there’s a very prominent shrine to Mao Tse-tung, who killed more Chinese than the Japanese ever did. If the Americans made that shrine a diplomatic issue, the Chinese would tell Washington to go screw themselves, and rightfully so. Heck, look at the monuments we have up in Washington — we have two for slave owners (Washington and Jefferson), and one for Lincoln — perhaps our best loved president, but a man who, had he pulled what he did in the American South today, would be sitting in the Hague right now along with Sherman and Grant. And those are the figures that come to immediately to mind; I’m sure there are tons of others if you want to do the research.
“True to form, Shin Jong Il misunderstands the concept and definition of “baiting” and thus lobs another false accusation at the Marmot. SJI lowers the quality of debate simply by showing up.
What is truly sad about this is the inability of Korean politicians of any stripe 1) to behave with any dignity and decorum EVER and, worse, 2) to address any POLICY issues in their incessant battles. ”
fuck you. when somebody says something you do not like you accuse him of lowering the quality of debate.
fuck you all
fuck all the americans
Paul H. is wrong anyway. There *is* such a word as “bating” although it’s not used in the context of “red-baiting”. The root “-bate” means to set aside, or to hold back (e.g. abatement).
Don’t believe me? Ever hear the phrase “waiting with bated breath?” I am sure you’ve often thought it was spelled “baited” but that’s incorrect. Waiting with bated breath means standing by in breathless anticipation — waiting with one’s breath held back.
Posted by: Brendon Carr | March 25, 2004 10:43 AM
it’s unbelievable that a lawyer would stoop down so low.
Mr. Carr, if you were in america, you would be chasing ambulances
Troll Alert!