With the fifth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks coming up, what is the best way to remember the event? If you are the Hankyoreh, you use the image of the attacks on the World Trade Center for laughs at the expense of your political opponents.
Classy.
On the other side of the aisle, the Chosun runs a cartoon with ethnic stereotypes.
Nice.
(BTW, here are some more examples of 9-11 WTC-related cartoons.)
38 Comments
On that night, I tried to make my way to the site. I could only see the sight from afar. The police had the whole area barricaded and were threatening arrest if we didn’t turn around away from the site.
Empty trains gave the creepiest eerie feeling. Kind of like “the night of the living dead” or some other zombie movie..mood. Stranded straphangers all had the same sad empty, shocked look about them.
But, the one thing that disturbed me the most was, the stench in the air that permeated the entire area… of burnt humans.
I was also living in NY on 9/11, though a little outside the city. Seeing the Hanky cartoon made me feel ill. I don’t know how you could trivialize such an event. It’s like comparing a traffic accident to the Holocaust.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but the cartoon seems a little incoherent to me.
Well, I don’t think the commies at the Hanky will be laughing when they realize the bill they have to foot when the US pulls out of here. That is, unless they figure they can just downsize and pool the ROK military with the North’s and save cash that way.
It’s in poor taste and not representative of a real newspaper.
Wow. Anyone notice the Gaesong Industrial Complex propiganda right next to the WTC cartoon in the first link? No need to ask what that paper’s agenda is…
Thanks for that last set of cartoons…quite moving…
Snow,
You need to try to think like a leftist to get the “joke.” By their thinking, the 9-11 attacks were a chance for Bush to pursue his evil agenda (which he would have done in any case). They likewise see the opposition to changing wartime control as an excuse for Bush to rip Korea off by making it pay more for its own defense. That is why you have Bush smiling at an image of a plane heading towards the two towers. To a Korean lefty, it makes perfect sense.
jodi,
Yeah, they helped give a little balance.
Snow, you just don’t understand Korean Pride®
Bu$shie spends every waking moment thinking of how to screw over Korea — that’s why he’s not paying attention to Iraq these days.
Last night there was a program on Korean TV about how 9-11 was a “hoax.” Guess Korean media is getting ready to mark the occasion in their usual objective, in-depth way.
Koreans making fun with 9/11 images and generally being shockingly disrepectful are not a result of Iraq. They began doing it on 9/11. I remember serious Korean newspapers referring to Ohnogate as “our 9/11.”
Bin Laden was as popular amoung college age Koreans on 9/12 as he was in Syria. And that is no lie.
I think the issue goes beyond mere anti-Americanism. It touches a very sore spot in the Korean psyche. Koreans have never responded heroically to any attacks. They have been doormats and cowards for their entire history. Remember the image of the owner of Sampoong Department Store running out of the collapsing building without even bothering to warn his workers. Contrast that with the image of the NYPD and FDNY running into the burning towers. Koreans need to mock 9/11. They need to turn it into a joke. Because the image of American courage and the ability to rally together is just too painful for them.
wait a minute, you go out of your way to defend a danish cartoon depicting a religious icon as a terrorist but you go wacky over a cartoon about 9/11? where’s your cries for free speech? where’s your counsel for maturity? yet another example of the expat’s inability to practice what he peaches. pathetic.
‘i had a right to point out mohamed was a child molestor since he’s a religious icon who many people look up to, even though they know about his child molesting.’ comment from one of the more ignorant expats on this board
thomas jefferson was forcing himself on a 14 year old girl. shouldn’t we tarnish him too?
‘may i ask thee, exapt-most-foul? doth thou not see that thou art the reason we beget planes into our* buildings?’ pawi the poet
* i use the word ‘our’ to denote our common heritage as americans.
:_8
pawikirogi,
Once again you’re way off. No one’s calling for the murder of these “cartoonists”. Just scorning/ridiculing their message.
Get back in your cage.
pawikirogi, Koreans also died on 9-11: “Also, 27 South Koreans were listed as missing. One Korean was on the hijacked United Airlines plane from Boston. Kim Ji-soo was headed to Los Angeles to visit her grandmother.”
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/W.....index.html
“Christine Lee Hanson, 2, was carted aboard United Airlines Flight 175 in Boston by her parents, Peter, 32, and Sue Kim Hanson, 35. The flight was bound for Los Angeles. Christine was headed for her first visit to Disneyland. According to the Korea Herald, Sue Kim Hanson, a Korean-American was due to earn her doctorate in November.”
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/n.....E_ID=25771
Pull your head out of your ass and focus on the topic being discussed for a change.
Well said, Ben.
Don’t see anyone issuing a fatwa here. Do we recognize the parasites for what they are? Yep.
I’m kind of proud to see the Stars and Strips beside your name. Reminds me that the whole is greater than its parts. Even with the lesser ones.
Yes, more idiot drivel and failure to note the obvious: as Iceberg said, nobody is calling for the newspaper to be firebombed or the cartoonist ritually beheaded. We are exercising our right to free speech as well. And we’re not even calling for your beheading, yet….
Anyway — as Eller said, a sizable chunk of Korean society was reacting in a not so nice way to 9/11 way before Iraq War II.
See this site.
I can remember standing everyday at the subway platform right in front of the large screen television as it played the commercial where Bin Laden was flying a cartoon plane and kept buzzing around the two towers, because he did not have Korean technology aboard that would allow him to strike the buildings. Fond memories indeed…..
pawi, you’re simply dumb as a frigging box of rocks.
You know, using this paper to measure the character of Koreans is like using Fox News to measure the character of Americans… Oh wait. Most of you probably think that’s a good thing…
As I recall, they were chasing Superman because he had the Korean newspaper they wanted to read. Was there a second one that I missed?
I cant help but notice that A and B are not really related to each other. Other than B seems to be in support of A… craziness!
It’s a damned shame when nationalistic stupidity creates both bad cartoons and bad commentary.
I agree on the Hanky issue. I’ve used tons of material from the English language version of the major Korean press on my site, but I’m not sure I’ve quoted from it more than once: because I don’t know how wide its circulation is or how influencial but believe it is far enough in the minority that I’d be doing better to stick to the larger papers.
However, both the Chosun and Joongang dailies have run items on the anniversaries of the attacks that would piss off most Americans, and those are just two examples of the phenomenon you can find elsewhere in the society besides the Hanky and its faithful.
On the ad — I don’t recall seeing Superman at all. This was a cartoon with a large head of Bin Laden sticking out of the small passenger plan as he buzzed around the towers trying to crash into them in vain….
Silly Willy is just as much in need of logic training as poor pawi.
“Snow,
You need to try to think like a leftist to get the “joke.”
“Snow, you just don’t understand Korean Pride®”
Thanks Andy and Michael, I see what you mean. Still seems pretty lame to me, though if I were a moronic conspiracy theorist or a twit like Pawi, I might find the cartoon funny.
And what’s the standard line about how insensitive America is to Korea?
I find this and the Muhammad cartoon more childish then anything. When I first read that the Americans were talking about pulling out of Korea I honestly though they’d be glad for it, (since they seem to blame American GI’s and foreigners for every woe that inflicts their country and maintain the country would be better if they just left).
Korean (at least the picture that the media paints) seem to act like an angst ridden teenage who thinks she can say and act as she pleases. However once she get what want she wants, she start to think about the consequence, i.e. taxes are gonna rise considerable, and she don’t like what she see. Surely it’s a countries responsibility to pay for its own defence so why complain?
Well… to be fair, chances are they’re just ‘creatively borrowing’ from the conspiracy videos being produced here in the good ol’ USA, especially drivel like ‘Loose Change’. Of course, most of the conspiracy videos don’t make it onto the mainstream media in America, so I guess you could infer a bit of irresposibility on the part of the media over there… But of course, I’ve not seen the show, so can’t really pass judgment on it.
I cannot speak for others, but I criticized the cartoon as being in poor taste and supported the decision of CNN and many other US media organizations not to print them. What Westerners were defending was not the cartoons themselves, as Nulrogi misrepresented, but the right to publish them. What most expats are criticizing on this thread is the tastefulness of the cartoons. Nobody is filing a lawsuit against the Hani to stop the publication of such images or even protesting outside its headquarters, nevermind phoning in bomb threats.
I think the Korean media’s trivializing of 9/11 reflects the fact that Koreans focus on their own past and present sufferings and hardships and thus are not sensitive to how people from other countries might view a Nazi-themed bar or a cartoon commercial depicting Bin Laden flying around the WTC.
A sad footnote to 9/11: today’s Washington Post carried a story about the health effects of the polluted debris on first responders: 70% have chronic health problems directly caused by coming into contact with toxic substances in the rubble.
This might end up sounding like a defense of Korea’s use of victimization to heighten a sense of nationalism, but it isn’t meant to be that way.
After being colonized for so long, then having the nation split, then facing major upheaval and chaos that threatened to bring the whole thing crashing down into the hands of Kim Il Sung, then having a devastating war, and coming out of it still a split society in SK alone, they used nationalism, anti-communism, and victimization to pull together people who were not used to working together like that, and under Park Chung Hee, they did what only a small handful of other nations have before (if any with similar factors have accomplished as much in so little time).
But, it also planted the seeds for its own trouble too - in more ways than one.
And the question is whether they will get over this next hump
if the US really does decide (finally) to reshape its forces as it should have done earlier when the Cold War came to an end.
I was curious as to whether this offensive cartoon appears in either the Japanese or Chinese editions of the Chosun Ilbo. It does indeed appear in the Japanese version:
http://japanese.chosun.com/sit.....00060.html
but the Chinese version substituted a cartoon about striking electric company workers and the big Chaebol:
http://chn.chosun.com/site/dat.....00028.html
It seems that the Chosun Ilbo is afraid to offend the Chinese but not the Japanese.
“usinkorea” does make me consider that Korea does need something to pull it together other than the pursuit of making money or “development” for the sake of development, which is very mindless and wasteful.
Whereas the three kingdoms could come together under the political and social influence of Buddhism, there seems to be a lack of center in Korea that might help bind the society together. Most definitely, a rabid, Chinese-style nationalism or capitalism is *not* the answer here either. A more mature and steady application of national pride and love of one’s society is needed where one has had only neglect and propaganda in the education system in Korea.
Don’t want to hijack the thread here, but 35 years is short compared to the British colonization of India and Malaya, the Netherlands’ colonization of Indonesia, 300 years of Spanish followed by 100 years of American colonization of the Philippines, European colonization of practically the entire continent of Africa, whose peoples were permanently divided by national boundaries drawn by their colonizers. The whole point of Lankov’s recent post was that Koreans and foreigners need to view Korean history with a global perspective.
Zonath, the TV show with the 9-11 hoax theme was ostensibly a “news” program. My Korean is minimal and I only watched about 2/3rds of it, but I did not see anyone disputing the claims, which included three guys in their 20s watching a computer showing the explosion at the Pentagon (supposedly from a security camera–I hadn’t seen it before) and snorting in disbelief. There were no opposing viewpoints as far as I could tell, maybe in passing it was mentioned that a conspiracy is a minority view.
The intentional killing of hundreds of people involving a coordinated attack by the U.S. military, sure…and to what end? Bu$hie didn’t need to stage a 9-11 to attack Iraq or send troops after Bin Laden. This is tinfoil hat thinking.
YTN often runs segments that make fun of Bu$hie, complete with cartoon sound effects, and this is part of their “news” programming. Hey, freedom of speech and all that, it just puts the national neuroses of inferiority complex and jealousy on display, and shows how small-time the media here is.
US rule in the Philippines was roughly 50 years, not 100.
I remember 9/11 like it was yesterday.
I was crossing the George Washington bridge from NJ in my car, on my way to work. It was about 8:45 am. I was listening to the AM radio news on 880. There was a report about a plane crashing into one of the towers. At first, it only seemed like just some horrible accident. 30 mins later, there was a breaking report about another plane crashing into the pentagon. I remember the chill that crept up my spine when I heard that. I instantly realized, this was no accident.
The traffic on the FDR highway south was jammed packed. In the distant horizon I could see gray smoke billowing into the sky. I called my group supervisor on my cell phone. I work in the Financial District. The company building is located only two blocks away from what will later be known as ground zero. The offices of Morgan Stanley and Merril Lynch, two of our biggest clients, is located in the WTC. I asked Mike (the supervisor) if any of our guys from the department were in the WTC. Fortunately, none of our guys were trapped there. But he mentioned that they felt the shockwave rippling through the building caused by the explosion caused when the first plane collided with the tower. Then I got cut off.
I tried calling him back. By that time, the cell network was overloaded. I couldnt place any calls. I tried calling my parents in the Bronx. No success.
When I got to where Chinatown is, I could plainly see the towers engulfed in flames and smoke. It was like a scene from a movie. By that time the second tower was hit. I saw the people in the streets. They were going about their daily business, unloading goods from trucks, etc as if nothing unusual was happening, as if the sight of two major landmarks of NYC burning in the immediate backdrop was a normal, everyday event. It was totally surreal.
By the time I around the Battery Park tunnel and emerged into the West Side highway, more than two and a half hours had past since I was on the GWB. At the Chelsea Piers, I parked my car by the side of the highway and got out. I had a clear view of the towers. It was at that time that the first tower collapsed. The amount of smoke and debris was terrific, like an avalanche. People around me panicked. I hurried back to my car to get away. Two girls, genuinely frightened, begged me to take them to Midtown. Another guy threw himself in front of my car as I was about to bug out, imploring me to take him in my car also. I let the two girls and the guy in, and we drove away as fast as possible.
After I had dropped them off, I decided that I wasnt going to go to work that day. I drove to my parents home in the Bronx. My father was in his room watching everything on TV. There was only one channel working, an obscure channel that was normally used for Polish language programming. Everything else was static. ABC news was broadcasting from that channel, their original channel was no more, as that had relied on transmisson from the antennae located on the tower, which had collapsed.
Must have been chilling to be in the vicinity and to see it go down. It was bad enough just seeing it on tv half a world away.
And the very next day, the conspiracy theorists and apologists at my university (kyopo and expat coworkers) and on the net started right in on blaming everything on the US.
It may be a distinction without a difference, but to be fair, the reason the Bin Laden couldn’t strike the buildings was because he became engrossed in the Sports Shinmun.
I curse the incompetent U.S. INS agents who allowed nulji’s parents into the U.S. No matter how badly the nation may have needed dry cleaners at the time, it was not worth it.
Mere weeks after the attack a Cheongju dept store advertised a sale with a full page newspaper ad showing Twin Towers on fire, and slogan: price cutting terror.
As for the animated commercial - I remember a Korean sports newspaper using a light-hearted take on 9/11.
Anyway, they’ve been mining the comic possibilities of 9/11 for years, despite the Korean deaths. As long as more non-Koreans are killed it still becomes amusing for them I guess.
But let a Jay Leno make fun of their love of dog-meat? Now that’s hitting below the belt!!
Oh dear, you must not know Koreans very well then, do you? They will never cease to surprise you. They love to trivialize and even make fun of people dying (9-11, Hiroshima, etc.) as long as it fits their racist political agenda. However, they love to revel in their own suffering…whereas the suffering of others is merely something which they can laugh about and make fun of. The words “tact”, “class”, and “good manners” do not exist in the Korean language.
True, Wiesunja. South Koreans who grew up in the 60’s and 70’s remember being led by teacher in cheers & laughter whenever there was a natural disaster in Japan.
Jokes about Hiroshima prove my point. Thousands of Koreans died there too. But more Japanese died, so it was a net plus for uri nara.
I think foreigners should return the favor. We should laugh cheer and hold parties on the anniversery of the Sampoong Dept. Store collapse, the Songsu Bridge collapse and the Daegu subway fire accident. Wouldnt it be great to celebrate and cheer when those barbaric Koreans die? Imagine the laughter it would bring!
Oh but wait..I forgot, foreigners have something that Koreans don’t have…it’s called “civility” and “tact” which prevents us from engaging in such low class,dirty acts.
Just as a side note, notice how in Japan, the building accidents occur from natural disasters. In Korea, the buildings and bridges collapse just by themselves! Hahaha..says alot about Korean “quality” engineering.
Reminds me - is that Nazi-themed restaurant/coffee shop still around?
Post #29 by Bluejeeves reminds me very much of this earlier plagiarized post - http://www.rjkoehler.com/2006/.....ment-46859
Like the Fred Reed essay, the eyewitness account reads very much like a crafted essay one might find in a newspaper or magazine, not at all like a spontaneous blog comment, and it is a stand-alone piece that does not related directly to either the OP or any comments. In fact, it is strange that Bluejeeves, who seems to have been directly impacted by the 9/11 experience, has not expressed any outrage at the exploitation of 9/11 in political cartoons and advertising.
Post #29 by Bluejeeves reminds me very much of this earlier plagiarized post -
No ma’am, that is not plagiarized, made up, or pulled out of my ass. It is a true eyewitness account by your’s truly. It is the first time I have written down what I saw on that fateful day in prose.
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[...] I found the link to this Chosun Ilbo political cartoon over at the Marmot’s Hole: The Chinaman marches full steam ahead, claiming the history of Koguryo, Barhae and even areas near the Han River for China, and tells a panting Japan, which only has designs on the outlying Korean islets of Dokdo, “You are a puny lot. Once you’ve decided on a lie, you gotta be BOLD!” [...]
[...] Yesterday, I posted on a Hankyoreh cartoon making light of the 9-11 attacks and the Chosun Ilbo using ethnicly ‘insensitive’ caricatures of Chinese and Japanese in another cartoon. [...]